The Powerhouse of the Cell

In addition to losing the sense of taste and smell with the Coronavirus, these days it seems that we’ve collectively lost our sense of humor. Not that we don’t laugh, but there are just so many things that aren’t funny at the moment. More than usual, with a global pandemic raging for which we will probably never know the number of deaths it caused.

That said, I had to test my students in their sports class, a speaking exam. There is a theoretical part to this class, covering the subjects of physiology, nutrition, first aid and doping.

So one girl pulled out a question about blood doping. She said, correctly, that this is when an athlete takes blood out, say after a few weeks of training in altitude, and then “I guess they reinject it later before a competition”. And I start cracking up because what else are they going to do with it? Drink it? Bathe in it? So my poor mind is going through scenarios about athletes doing pseudo Satanic rituals before their matches or whatever and I was soooooo happy to be wearing a mask.

The next student had a question about muscle injuries and sprains and talked about RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). That was the subject of another laughing attack two years ago when it became “Rest: take a nap. Ice: eat an ice cream C (I couldn’t find anything so I changed it to Compassion): ask them “Does it hurt?” and Elevation: meditate.) So he was talking about elevating the injured part to reduce the swelling, and I started imaging falling on your backside and having to elevate your butt in the air. One more laughing attack. Happy for the mask.

And every time a student mentioned physical adaptations to endurance training, they mentioned “mitochondria” to which I automatically replied “the powerhouse of the cell.”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/could-you-possibly-get-a-high-school-diploma-now

Foro is just shaking my head at me. It’s not that funny, but these days, I’ll take all the humor I can get.