“Ow?”
I have a dear doctor pal who has this intriguing habit of looking up not just the meaning of words, but their origins. It’s both annoying and educational. Plus side? You get smarter, if only in a Chamber of Commerce Mixer/Useless Information sort of way. But the guy will follow you into men’s room stalls, breathlessly spouting definitions and where words first reared their ugly heads.
“Hey! Check this out!” says my friend, blocking my access to the toilet paper. “‘Divorcee?’ Traced back to the year, 1400. From the French, ‘to put away or abandon.’ Taken from the word, ‘divorcer.’ Hey! You’re not going to believe this John, but the Oxford Dictionary of Etymology has your photo next to the word!” He laughs. Resoundingly. I ask if he could get to the part of his stand-up where he points out he has T-shirts and CD’s for sale on the table in the back and close the door on his way out.
I looked up the word, “ow,” the other day. It can be traced to just about every Indo-European language except English. It seems to derive from the Old French, an interjection used to denote a wide variety of emotions, from pain to fear to surprise. I’ve found myself using the term more and more lately, like sitting, standing, walking, resting, bumping into an old in-law.
One of baseball’s greatest players, Mickey Mantle, once quipped: “Had I known I was going to live this long I would’ve taken better care of myself.” The nerve of the guy, the New York Yankee slugger was just a punk kid when he said it.
Despite what those lying life insurance tables dourly predict, I’m a kid. I probably should’ve at least experimented three-quarters of a century ago with what some coaches, doctors and limber Buddhist monks like to refer to as — “stretching.”
In my wasted youth and beyond, I was quite the jock and physical specimen. Ranch work. Sports. Horseback riding. Running up and down mountains midday in 418-degree August heat. Weight lifting. Miles and miles of unforgiving, challenging and exhausting chasing after both kinds of women — the right kind and the wrong kind. And, I never stretched. Before weddings. After weddings. Not once.
Adding insult to groin injury, I estimate I’ve spent 97.6% of my life slouching in front of legal pads, typewriters and computers — writing, writing and more writing. It’s brought not necessarily a new word into my vocabulary, but one I use several times a minute.
“Ow.”
Presently, four times weekly, I’m seeing a chiropractor AND a physical therapist, separately and non-romantically.
It’s not like they say things like: “John. If you were a car I’d strongly suggest you set yourself on fire, drive yourself off a very tall cliff, collect the insurance and get yourself a second-hand John Boston only one with less than 111,750,032 miles on the odometer.” Or —
“Renounce Christianity and get a vampire to bite you on the neck and become the undead. You’ll feel better.” Or —
“Get the $13.98 in advance and donate your body to the Democratic Party for junk science. Use the money for that last and final six-pack of beer and a paper party hat.”
“Ow.”
I’ve started to stretch. I don’t know why. I hurt in muscles I didn’t know I owned. Neighbors come by, staring at their shoes.
“John? Would you mind stop stretching? Our elderly dog can feel your pain in his joints …”
“Hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-OWW!” Yes. It hurts even when I laugh. Living in California, that’s often, followed by hours of crying jags. Worse? It hurts to cry. I’ve been stretching now for several months and I don’t see myself getting limberer (cheese), although my “ow’s” as I stretch have gone from a six-point Helvetica font to a 1,600-point Arial Black Double Extra Bold So “OW!” Just Looks Like A Blob Of Ink.
My joints and muscles haven’t gotten the memo. You see people on those late-night TV medicine commercials who were around to catch the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. (For you Hart District history-challenged students, that would be the famous presidential verbal sparrings between Abraham Lincoln and Buster Douglas, who knocked out Mike Tyson in Japan or Saugus, a seeming week ago).
These smiling-out-of-context TV seniors are merrily going about their day, hoisting pre-diabetic grandchildren, fighting ninjas, bowling. There’s an “ow.” Bowling. Anyone over 40 shouldn’t bowl. We’ve got arthritis in the fingers and there’s the serious threat of not being able to let go of the ball, which, at 16 pounds, weighs as much as most elderly people. One runs the danger of flying down the alley, still clutching the black orb, smashing into those heavy wooden pins and going, “ow” 10 times because, say it with me, there’s 10 pins in bowling, less if you knock some down.
I suppose I could eschew stretching and maybe take up heroin, which is a problem because I hear heroin is expensive and while I’m not too old to sell my body for someone else’s perversion, I fear my going, “ow” all the time would be a distraction and spoil the mood for both or all six of us.
I could make better use of my malady, maybe join a tribute band, honoring The Rivingtons and their 1962 hit single, “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” This being an equal rights newspaper, I’d like to point out The Rivingtons six months later released their second hit, “Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow.” Curious. The beat and lyrics? Hauntingly similar.
“Ow?”
It sounds better as a question. Like you’re out jogging before sun-up and a pack of mountain lions (don’t tell the yuppies they run in packs) attack you. After they leave, you do a pat-down to check if all your limbs are still there.
When you discover a few aren’t, THEN you make a face and go — “Ow …”
With more than 100 writing awards, Santa Clarita’s John Boston is Earth’s most prolific humorist and satirist. Look for “Naked Came the Novelist” Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch, coming this fall on johnboston-books.com.
