COLD SPRING HARBOR, NY—Recoiling in disgust while recalling the upsetting incident, a eukaryotic cell confirmed Monday that it had been severely traumatized upon accidentally witnessing its parent cell divide and replicate itself through a process of mitosis. “God, it was so gross—all the organelles were just hanging out, and you could see everything,” said the 4-week-old diploid somatic cell, claiming that the repulsive image of its parent making genetically identical copies of itself would remained burned in its memory for the rest of its two-month lifespan. “There was cytoplasm everywhere! Ugh. I knew it was something that happened, obviously. It’s how I was brought into the world. But even if you understand, in the abstract, that your parent cell is an asexual being, nobody wants to think about it being split in two like that, let alone come membrane-to-membrane with it. I mean, Jesus, I came in right when it was reaching telophase.” The eukaryotic cell added that immediately after the distressing event it was so queasy it wanted to commit apoptosis “right then and there.”

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