"X" is for X-ray

When I was a freshman in college at Penn State, my brother graduated from Chiropractic school in Chicago. He set up shop in our home town and I worked for him in the evenings and on Saturdays during my spring semester. I worked for him all summer that first year too. Then, I loved it so much, and I was so afraid of the math classes that I had to take the next year, that I just dropped out and worked for him for the next 15 years. We started that business together and I was proud to work there. He is so good and so caring. He taught me to develop X-rays the old fashioned way in a dark room with smelly chemicals and a dark light. Our dark room was on the second floor of his old victorian office building and in the summer it had to be 105 degrees in there. The process took about 15 minutes in which time you were totally trapped because you couldn't open the door. I used to sit on the floor in that tiny space and wait for the timer to go off so I could open the door and escape the heat. That was total day-dreaming and meditation time because there was nothing else you could do. It was before husband, before kids, before being grown up. I remember it fondly.