View from the North 40: Oh, rats, you know how to live right

That 2019 news about scientists teaching rats to drive a car is making the rounds again like it’s been cruising the drag and is coming back up the street.

I was going to sit at my stop sign and let the fast and the furriest drive on by without commenting or even waving. But, I don’t know, it’s a story about lab rats being happy about driving a car to a spot where someone brings food to your window like going to an old-fashioned drive-up restaurant where a carhop brings you your milkshake and a burger.

Sure, it’s not like they get to hit the open road and feel the wind on their face, but if you live in a cage in a plain white room and then get the keys to dad’s new car in a plexi-glass play area in a laboratory, that’s gotta feel pretty liberating.

That’s part of what the scientists at University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, were studying — does driving make the rats happy. And it does. The happy hormones in their poop said so.

Another portion of the driving study was to test the ability of the rats to learn how to drive. It’s not like they had to master a clutch and stick-shift, but they had three wires to grab — one each for right and left turns and one to go forward. They pretty much drove in the classic style of a driver on his way to a first class aggravated DUI charge, but they understood the basic principle of getting from point A to point B.

This part of the research was to study what is called neuroplasticity, a nerd word for the brain’s ability to adapt to changes in its surroundings and or activities by forming new neural connections. This is how the brain masters new skills and stores memories and information.

Some of the rats were housed in a small group in a cage with lots of fun things to play with and on, and the others were kept in cages with nothing but one friend to engage with. The research clearly showed that the rats in the fun cage learned to drive in less time and with greater skill than the other rats.

At this point, I would like to reveal one of the tragic stories of my youth. Grab a tissue.

As a pathologically shy child I spent my summers with my family and hiding from interactions with children of all age groups. Then came the fateful summer of driver’s education class when I had to spend several weeks in town, in a classroom and then in a small vehicle with my peers.

The classroom was manageable, but that driving thing was a hell of such proportions I wasn’t sure my body would survive the encounter.

I had to figure out how to drive a car — while a teacher and two of my classmates sat there and watched me. They had nothing better to do. I sweated so much I was dehydrated by the time I got done, and worse, my arms and right leg were so cramped from the tension that I limped into the classroom and had to place my hands on the desk as I was falling into my chair so I wouldn’t have to lift my arm to the desktop to write.

One of my classmates in the vehicle was Topper, who had been driving everything from motorcycles to tractors and semi-tractortrailers since shortly after birth. Topper drove with one hand one the steering wheel and one arm cocked back to rest on the back of the bench seat, and he chatted with the instructor about car stuff while he was driving. Topper said, “Hey, thanks, man,” to the teacher when he was done driving and gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder as he stepped out of the car.

My parents didn’t let us drive kids drive before we got a learner’s permit. They couldn’t afford the bill if we crashed before we got on the car insurance. We had bicycles.

Well, that is until we got the riding lawnmower, but my older brother got that chore and hogged all the mower driving experience. I get it, he was challenged. I mean, he’s the only one of us kids who ran into a parked car with their bike, so he needed help with his skills, and maybe our parents thought he was expendable.

Still, it stunted me.

In the end, I was the dumb rat with the boring life, and my classmate Topper was the clever rat raised in the neuroplasticity-enriching environment.

If I have a point at all with any of this, it’s to say that I am the cautionary tale to show people they should raise their kids to be better rats than I and my brother were.

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And while you’re at it, go out and do things with your body and your mind, because the studies say you’re never to old to create a malleable brain. Be Topper, people, at http://facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.com .