Sunday, February 02, 2003

Second run: went fine. Good

Second run: went fine.  Good music, great weather.  I didn’t have any knee problems.  And additionally, I was free of an old burning pain up the right hamstring, all the way into my low back, persistent and prickly.  I imagined legions massed in anger, demanding freedom from just such an ailment, shouting voices joined in proud protest, “Sciatica!  Sciatica!”

Along the way I saw something I found quizzical: This guy, maybe mid-thirties to mid-forties, asian, in runnning shorts and running shoes but no shirt, jogging along with a steady pace.  Everything seemed very normal till I noticed the huge red mark on his chest from where he was smacking himself in the pectoral with every stride.  Every time he swung back his arm, he whacked himself in his naked right boobie.  Once again I found myself confronted with the spectre of the purple nurple. Its interesting when the world spontaneously presents you with a theme. 

As a final note, the word “quiz” is one of my favorites because it’s so made up.  The OED describes its origin as “obscure” (oh ok, “obsc").  Merriam-Webster is no more help.  My sources tell me that it was invented by an Irish impressario who made a bet with a friend that he could create a new word and get it into public discourse in the course of a summer in the 1740s.  He just chalked the word “quiz” all over Dublin and that voraciously literate city was driven to distraction wondering what it meant.  So that’s exactly what it wound up meaning - a conundrum, or riddle, or test of knowledge.  Gives you hope, doesn’t it?  Someday everybody might be calling it “tax evoision.” Hell, I think the president has already made “embiggen” a part of the popular vocabulary.