Your Achilles Heel is Actually Herculean

I had to cover the track coach on Tuesday at morning basketball-- the match-ups were off because Jeff, the other old man, was out with a strained calf-- and covering this fast youngster involved a lot of backpedaling, consequently, my Achilles tendon was stiff and sore Tuesday night and Wednesday-- and I found great amusement recounting this to my English classes because there is no more literary injury than a sore Achilles heel-- but there is another layer of paradoxical irony to this situation: apparently the Achilles is the strongest tendon in the body, so if Thetis was going to leave any part of her son's body out of the River Styx, the Achilles tendon was a good choice-- and I am hoping that now that I have learned this ironic fact, my Achilles will heal more rapidly than it would have when I thought it was the weakest link in the skeletal-muscular chain.