ENERGOPHAGI

You know what a sarcophagus is, right?  That’s what the Ancients – and modern archaeologists – call a stone coffin.  Anthropologists like them, too, as attested to by the Ogden Nash poem:  “Among the anthropophagi, one’s friends are one’s sarcophagi.”  (I don’t know why I like that so much; I’ve kept it stored in my head for at least 60 years!)

Why did they call it that?  Well, because whenever they opened a sarcophagus they found a skeleton: skin and bones, but never any flesh.  They thought (really?  Can they have been that dumb?) that the stone coffin had somehow eaten the flesh, hence “sarco” (flesh in Greek), and “phagus” (eating), yielding sarcophagus.   See what interesting stuff you learn from my blog!

Well, I have come to realize that my favorite chairs all are energophagi, from energos (Greek for energy) and, of course, phagus, as before.  That is because whenever I sit down in them I go almost immediately to sleep.  Sitting in those chairs I can’t even make it all the way through the Bellingham Herald without a nap!  More and more I find that I can do serious reading only while sitting bolt upright before a desktop computer, on a hard wooden chair.

Just a gentle warning, kiddo.  You’ll get here someday.