Sometimes an unexpected encounter can lead down memory lane. And not all memories are ones to be proud of.

Barb and I were walking through the parking lot of Charlie Beimlich’s Food and Tap, our not-quite-a-dive-bar go-to place when we are in the mood for a juicy burger. In the evening gloaming, I very briefly saw a couple walking ahead of us and mentioned to Barb that the pair looked like Aaron and Ruth Reynold, two fellow physicians that I hadn’t seen in years.

As Barb and I were led to our seats I glanced at each of the dozen tables in the restaurant but didn’t see the other couple. We ordered our burgers and distracted by the food and the Bulls’ play-in game on the restaurant TV, I forgot all about the possible sighting.

But as we were leaving, I took a look at the people sitting at the bar and convinced myself that Aaron and Ruth were seated there and were just finishing their meal. I walked up to the couple at the bar, tapped Ruth on the shoulder, and said hello. She looked surprised at first, but then recognized me and smiled her own greeting.

Barb joined us and after a brief reintroduction, Ruth, who was a former community pathologist like me, and Aaron, an internist, compared notes on our recent retirements, pickleball, grandkids, and the attraction of Florida. I reminded Aaron that we had been medical school classmates, the Class of 1979.

And as I drove home, I remembered a little bit more. Aaron and I had not just been classmates. We had both spent the summer between our M1 and M2 years as junior researchers in the lab of one of our professors, an Eastern European scientist studying the pharmacology of sleep.

I didn’t have a car that summer, so every day I would board the El at the Morse Ave stop and ride into the city. A long walk through an underground tunnel connected me to the train going west and in a few minutes, I was at the medical campus and the lab. That voyage prepared me for what was to come each day.

I had been assigned to a post-doc and together we perfected an assay to measure a chemical linked to sleep. That was fine. It was the other half of my duties that I now regret. Our subjects were cats. I won’t describe how we obtained our feline material for testing, but I assure you it was regrettably cruel, and would be wholly unacceptable today, and should have been then, too.

My most horrifying moment was when a cat I was working with escaped and ran into the office of the department chairman, a very severe, sharply dressed gentleman who was one of the few African-American professors in the medical school. I don’t know who was more frightened, the professor or the cat. That was the last live subject I handled in the lab.

The summer ended soon after that. I cashed my $1000 stipend and buried thoughts of those poor kittens. I never discussed the summer with Aaron, but our chance encounter at a hamburger bar brought it all back to me.

I wasn’t much of a friend to those kittens in the summer of 1976. I think I will give our cat some extra catnip tonight and donate to a pet shelter in the morning. It is the right thing to do.

---

Hey! Can you do me a favor? If you are a subscriber and enjoy my blogs, please email them to friends and contacts. And if you read my blogs on Facebook, please share them! We are always looking for new readers.