Women, actually.
One of them was manifestly skeletal. Totally arms and legs, to the point where it looked like her clothes were just fabric draped over her. I was worried she was going to bruise me with a sharp bone sticking out here or there. She apparently had enough glycogen stored in those stringy little muscles to power her on the dance floor for a couple of hours, because she sort of swayed her torso and paddled her arms to the music vaguely. Good for her.
Another was an Austrian chick. She and her friend from Berlin said that while America was great, it was not meeting their expectations so far. It was not "number one." I told her a lot of medical terms came from German discoverers. She corrected me: "Actually, the terms are Latin." I gave her the examples of Virchow’s triad and Schwann cells but I don’t think she understood me because of the language barrier, the loud music and the alcohol. So I looked dumb. She was pretty but she smoked about five cigarettes in a row during our brief conversation.
The other girl was paraplegic and in a motorized wheelchair. What she lacked in motor function, she made up for in number of friends, who were dancing all around her wheelchair while she sat there. It occurred to me that if one of us danced with the girl in the wheelchair, her friends would be free for the taking. Or maybe she was a famous physicist. Or maybe we were in a social experiment and our reactions were being filmed. Then I realized that was preposterous and a person with disabilities does not deserve to be stared at or talked about just for going out in public. But still. Thanks to frat boy humor websites I could not help but make the comment about how one guy jumps on the "grenade" for the sake of his buddies. But that usually refers to fat grenades, which is something the grenade can actually change. It’s cruel either way though.
pseudoisaac 