Ask A Genius 1029: No big toe extra stability
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/27
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is it possible the size of your second toes forced the restructuring of your entire foot and ankle to accommodate it?
Rick Rosner: Nope. My second toe may give me extra stability. It means my shoes have to be bigger, which may give me extra stability once I get used to them and don’t trip over them. But anyway, I’ve been lucky that way.
I cracked a tibia or a fibula while skiing. I lied about my weight when I was in 11th grade. They need to know how much you weigh so they can set the releases on your skis. I lied because I was embarrassed by how little I weighed. So the skis didn’t quickly release, and I kept falling without the skis releasing, which put pressure on the front of my shin. By the end of the day, I cracked a bone. It was slightly painful, and I walked with a cane for a week, which didn’t impress any girls. A cast might impress girls. Hemorrhoids have been one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. I probably would have had hemorrhoids anyway, but lifting weights exacerbated them.
I went out for wrestling and went from running 0 miles a week to 25 miles in one week. By the end of the week, my hemorrhoids were entirely sticking out of my ass like a cluster of grapes. Then I had surgery; they cut them off. And then I ordered pizza to show that I was a fun guy in the hospital. I had pepperoni pizza delivered to the hospital. I was shitting out the remains of the pizza after 1970s-era hemorrhoid surgery was brutal. It was about the only time I almost passed out from pain. So there you go.
The most painful thing I did was shit pizza after a hemorrhoidectomy. The end, rotten tomatoes. What is something you’ve been the most wrong about? I don’t mean regret, but evil. At various times in college, where I was for a long time, I stayed in college at my hometown university until I was 26 because I turned into a deep fuck-up, and I was working in bars at night. I didn’t give a shit. So anyway, I spent much time just thinking about shit.
I came up with the essence of my theory of the universe at age 21, but I still had several years of being half-heartedly in college to think about the implications of the theory. Among the momentary implications, the things that I entertained the possibility of for a minimal amount of time were magic. It was magical that, if the universe is this and we make some additional assumptions, you can think your way to special powers.
That would be a passing thought that would get me excited for 10 or 15 minutes in the dorm cafeteria. I spent much time thinking in the dorm cafeteria. I went there a lot, 5, 6, or 7 times daily, because I always tried to get bigger. This was the early 80s, and it was an era where you could still make some progress with women if you had a nice, jacked, muscly body, more so than now. Schwarzenegger popularized bodybuilding starting in about 1976.
And it would have worked better for me if I’d gotten muscly in high school because people are more naive in high school and have different priorities if you look hot. By college, everybody’s trying to be a grown-up, and they might want somebody who isn’t muscly, but it still worked enough. So I was always trying to get more muscly. I’d work out multiple times a day and eat all the time, so I’d be in the cafeteria with a ton of food, thinking about the universe.
Thinking that I could somehow turn myself into a magician is a wrong thought, though not one that I entertained for very long.
License & Copyright
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.
In-Sight Publishing 