Sunday rerun: Bad to the Bone

Quite humerus

Some nights, when I go to type my blog entry, I can hardly wait to sit down at the old keyboard. I have something on my mind to write about and it's just a matter of how quickly I can type. And then there are times like this, when there is no specific topic on my mind, nothing that really strikes my fancy. And where is my fancy, by the way? I imagine it is located somewhere near the funny bone. That's what we say when something amuses us, right? It "tickled my funny bone." I decided to look into this, since nothing else was on my mind. I called the medical examiner's office and the anatomy department at the School of Medicine, but both places said that recent budget cuts had left them short-handed. In other words, they were working with a skeleton crew.

Well, look at old skinny  here, and there is the old soupbone, the upper part of the arm. It's really called the "humerus," so it would appear that some wag lost in the history of anatomy was the first to call it the funny bone, since it was so humorous.

So what would happen if the anatomy texts taught tomorrow's doctors to use the common colloquial terms that we use for body parts? If you were being treated for a scalp laceration, wouldn't you feel better about a doctor who said, "Let's have a look at the old melon here..."? The podiatrist would tell you, "No matter your dogs are barking so loudly!" and the optometrist would really say, "Jeepers creepers! Where'd you get those peepers?"

I enjoy skeletons, and plan to do so, right up until the day I become one myself. I'm here to tell you, I'm bad to the bone.