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  • My story starts in the northern Galapagos Islands,

  • under 50 feet of water and a big school of sharks.

  • I'd been scuba diving with a group of friends for about a week,

  • and it had been glorious:

  • manta rays, whale sharks,

  • penguins and, of course, hammerhead sharks.

  • Today's dive was particularly tricky.

  • The surge was terrible.

  • You had to have your camera rig tight in

  • and your arm out,

  • because the surge kept throwing you into the rocks

  • while you're scanning up for that beautiful photograph.

  • It was going OK, until ...

  • not OK.

  • Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  • I pulled my hand back,

  • and I had long, black sea urchin spines

  • all the way through my gloves,

  • which meant all the way through my hand.

  • Now, this is bad.

  • I mean, obviously when you have something all the way through your hand,

  • it's kind of bad anyway,

  • but in this case, sea urchins have a venom on them that,

  • if you've ever tangled with them,

  • you know that a sea urchin spine in you gives you horrible, painful inflammation.

  • But that wasn't even topmost in my mind at this point.

  • This did not look real.

  • I could not believe that this was my hand.

  • Now, in a crisis, I tend to disassociate into, like, little scientists,

  • and I start talking very analytically.

  • All analysis was gone, adrenaline brain kicked in,

  • and I just yanked the spines out.

  • I don't remember doing it.

  • I just remember thinking, "I can't get my glove off with these in here."

  • I do remember taking the glove off

  • and a big plume of black coming up in front of my face.

  • And biologist brain now shows up and starts freaking out.

  • "How could all that toxin have gotten into that wound already?"

  • Well, physicist brain then shows up and very calmly explains,

  • "No, no, no, we're at 50 feet,

  • red wavelengths are attenuated.

  • That's blood -- not black.

  • And sharks.

  • So what are you gonna do?"

  • Well, I cranked my cummerbund down really hard over my hand,

  • and I simply swam away.

  • "Let's let that big old cloud of blood dissipate a bit before we have to surface

  • through all of these sharks."

  • So when I did surface,

  • my warm-blooded-mammal brain

  • was in an absolute gibbering panic:

  • "They don't feed when they're schooling. They don't feed when they're schooling.

  • All the way up."

  • And they didn't.

  • So apparently, they have read the same books that I have.

  • (Laughter)

  • Now, it turns out,

  • when you've been stabbed with sea urchin spines,

  • and you're two days away from any medical help,

  • the thing that you've got to do is, unfortunately, cook your hand.

  • So you put it in water as hot as you can stand,

  • and you keep adding boiling water

  • until you think you will go absolutely insane.

  • Now, it worked --

  • the hand itself did not work so well for several weeks after that,

  • but eventually, fine motor skills returned.

  • All except for one spot, that stayed stiff and painful for weeks

  • after the other things had gotten better.

  • So it turned out, I'd broken off a tip of the urchin spine

  • in the joint itself,

  • and that's why it wasn't getting better.

  • So the orthopedist says, "You know, we should get this out.

  • Nothing too urgent, not an emergency."

  • So we scheduled a small surgery for a few weeks out on a Monday.

  • And on the Friday before,

  • I broke my pelvis in a horseback riding accident.

  • (Laughter)

  • Yeah.

  • So we kind of postponed that surgery.

  • My broken pelvis and I were now facing six weeks on the couch,

  • and I would have gone absolutely insane if it hadn't been for my friends.

  • Spontaneous parties broke out at my house every night for weeks.

  • I was fed. I was entertained.

  • It was great.

  • But that kind of enthusiasm is sort of hard to sustain over the long term,

  • and eventually it petered down to just one friend,

  • who would send me jokes during the day

  • and come and keep me company in the evenings --

  • someone I got to know a whole lot better during this period of convalescence.

  • And when I was finally pronounced well enough

  • to do weight-bearing activities,

  • we loaded a telescope in the car and drove up into the mountains

  • to look at the HaleBopp comet.

  • Yes, we are geeks.

  • And got caught in a landslide.

  • (Laughter)

  • I know -- like, really?

  • No. Just kidding.

  • (Laughter)

  • No more disasters. No. Just the opposite, in fact.

  • That was 21 years ago,

  • and for 19 of those years,

  • I have been married to that marvelous introvert

  • who never in a million years would have approached me

  • under other circumstances.

  • We have a wonderful 14-year-old daughter,

  • who did all my illustrations.

  • (Cheers and applause)

  • Yeah.

  • So, pro tip:

  • apparently, nothing makes you sexier than needing a walker

  • on your first date.

  • So this isn't a story about piercings

  • or sharks or boilings or breakings.

  • It's a love story.

  • It's a love story with a funny little epilogue.

  • Now I was weight-bearing again, I could reschedule that surgery,

  • get the spine out.

  • But I didn't need it anymore.

  • Turns out, when you break a bone,

  • your body scavenges calcium from all the bones in your body --

  • and from the little sea urchin spine that you happen to have lodged

  • in the joint of your finger.

  • So yes,

  • my pelvis is now part sea urchin.

  • (Laughter)

  • So to biology brain, physicist brain,

  • adrenaline brain, warm-blooded-mammal brain,

  • I get to add "urchin brain,"

  • with all of the superpowers that that confers.

  • You don't need to worry, though:

  • that I am not fully human is one of the things

  • that my family loves the most about me.

  • (Laughter)

  • Thank you very much.

  • (Applause)

My story starts in the northern Galapagos Islands,

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