Epic-who?

Today in the aftermath of my cardiology visit I was sitting at my desk eating an orange and trying to bend a paperclip into new and hitherto-unknown shapes and became gripped by a strange train of thought. When I was in high school I fancied myself to be a Stoic. Actually, my friend fancied himself to be a Stoic too, and we took turns trying to prove that we knew Epictetus's Enchiridion better than the other. What does this have to do with cardiology? Nothing, but welcome to the strange world of how seemingly unconnected things go together in my head.

Anyway, we used to have contests to see who had the better command of Epictetus, but what I remember more than anything is the way we argued about his name. How do you pronounce Epictetus? I favored "epic-tea-tus". He favorited "ee-pic-teh-tus". So instead of having a fruitful discussion about a reasonably formative school of philosophy, we fought about the poor bastard's name.

Later I lost the Stoic faith, such as it is, and had a thrillful fling with what I fancied to be phenomonology until I realized that what I really knew about phenomonology would fit in a thimble. What I had done was read a little bit about phenomonology and invent an all-new school of philosophy that should have been called dumbassology. But it was fun. Dark, but fun. Darkly fun?

And that's the point. You get out of your cardiology appointment with nothing but good news to show for it, and suddenly it's fun to think about the bullshit philosophies one espoused in high school again.