Working Out & Knocking Oneself Up

Amid the locker chamber’s anthology of body odors, Greg Oden addressed me: “Spaniard, let’s go hoist dumbbells and yank pulleys in the weight room.”

“Knock yourself up,” I demurred. (In this fashion, I have managed to fend off many of his persuasive attempts this season!)

But this time, the ebon geriatric was not so easily put off. The expression is ‘knock yourself OUT’,” Greg answered. “To ‘knock myself up’ has an entirely different, biologically impossible expression.”

“I never let biological impossibilities stand in my way, whether on the parquet...or in the boudoir!” I proclaimed, while slyly exiting the chamber. When will it be known that weightlifting is not part of the Spanish paradigm?

Making my escape, this puts me in mind of other linguistic oddities. Per ejemplo, do you know why the French are reluctant to embrace American business models? It is because they don't have a word for “entrepreneur”!

And have I ever related news of the two Uzbek mates on my Badalona team in España? Their conversational gambits were most interesting. You see, it is customary for Uzbeks greeting each other to shout off a rapid series of questions. Meanwhile, his companion will do the same, all the while gesticulating wildly.

The bombardment might go thusly:

“Are you tired?”

“Is your work good?”

“How is your mother?”

“How do your free throws progress?”

“Do you like hot weather?”

These questions will serve as rhetorical devices…and as soon as one party actually ANSWERS a question, the conversation either commences or the two promptly bid adios.

Ah, a reminder to the self: I must try this gambit the next time Greg or a physicality trainer tries to lure me to the weights room!