( Eventually, we all are faced with a situation that we just don't know how to handle. Oh, we might say that looking for your first apartment or starting a new class seems overwhelming and hard to get a handle on, but ultimately? There's always someone to ask for advice - or offer unwanted advice, as the case may be. There's your friends, your family, your shrink or bank manager or the lady at Starbucks who always spells your name right. At the end of the day, people all jump through certain hurdles, even if the hurdles are different shapes or heights or sizes.

And then there comes the day when the hurdle isn't something you've ever even thought of preparing for, and this hurdle is on fire, at the edge of a cliff. It's not even a hurdle, like you thought. It turns out that you signed up for a trapeze instead, and the trapeze has no safety net.

[ the camera cuts to a young woman holding a spear, and Meredith Grey looks Very Tired. ]

At least you can always count on some things, even when you're trying to figure out how the Hell you're meant to be a trapeze artist. Oh, big city weirdos. Never change. Never give up the flaming trapeze. )

Yep. That's a future neurosurgeon, right there.

( Meredith's voice is quiet, but maybe not quiet enough given the very unsubtle okay, weirdo look that she just gave this world's female version of Alex Karev. )

I never knew having a parent with a god-complex allowed you to skip lines. I'd have started cashing in on that perk right away.