Exposing a nerve

Incongruous juxtaposition. We were studying Stephen Leacock in grade six, the great Canadian humourist. How I loved this combination of words. I walked around saying it over and over again - but not out loud - in my head. Then I could feel the words moving around in there like the perfect high grade oil on starving pistons and gear mechanisms.

I wasn’t the type either who collected big words, please don’t think it was anything like that, and not because I wouldn’t like to portray myself that way, who wouldn’t? It was the first time I ever worked at remembering a big word, in this case two. Incongruous juxtaposition: Leacock: slay me with your words.

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Shawn Green used to play baseball up here in Toronto with the Blue Jays. I didn’t notice him so much then. He looks better now, more scruffy, his right eye off, bending to the right when the camera studies him and looking bigger than the other one. He’s frayed, lost meat, from constant nerves reacting to the moment, like the moment of the ball colliding with the bat. Of making it do that; always less than perfectly: the game of baseball.

Most of the other players defend by getting bigger, fleshier. They hold their bats like toothpicks after eating too much dinner. With Green you think how close the other bones are to the flesh, the hip-bones underneath his baseball pants. You will him to be careful, when he makes his next pop-up slide to second.

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I’m getting a wisdom tooth extracted in a few hours. Larry says it’s not going to hurt a bit. They’re going to freeze it up with Novocain and I won’t feel a thing. I guess it’s just the imagining of the extracting that hurts.

The tooth broke when I was eating a cookie. Then it broke again. Then a few weeks later - the pain - from nerves exposed and dieing. Not so bad at first, then worsening. Things to do for the pain: hold your chin with your hand; it sooths. Hold your temple with your hand when the pain spreads up there. Hold your head with both your hands when it’s feeling all over the place. Puff out your cheeks by blowing air into them. Eat soup. Don’t chew on things. No cold things. Blow out your right cheek only, the side the pain comes from. Don’t clench your jaw. Always keep the top teeth away from the bottom. Take aspirin before bed.

Sleep on the couch when the aspirin’s not working because you can’t sleep, to stop from keeping Larry awake part of the night too. Go back to bed when the pain calms down.

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Did you know that back in his time the great Canadian humourist, Stephen Leacock opposed women’s rights? That his father was an alcoholic and left? I wonder what made Leacock think that way about women. Kind of an incongruous juxtaposition.