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MEN: THE SPORTS SECTION

JIM: I see where Petey Whelan died the other day. They say he had a tumor on him the size of a beach ball.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: No kiddin? That one under his arm? Jesus, it musta...

JIM: It sure did. I can remember the day I first saw it; it was small, like a marble. Then almost overnight it looked like a golf ball. I couldn’t believe it!

TOM: That was the day he showed it to me. By the time I saw it, it looked more like a slightly enlarged handball, maybe just approaching racquetball size. I spent about an hour with him, and as I was leavin’, I glanced at it. The damn thing looked like a te

mean it had fuzz on it or anything. I just mean it was the size of a te

JIM: Yeah. That’s when he went to the hospital. He said on the way over in the taxi it went from a baseball to a softball, and then, in the waiting room, it reached the size of a small, regulation volleyball. Finally, when he got into the examining room, the doctors were so alarmed at its growth they smashed it with a big fryin’ pan, and it temporarily flattened out into an oval shape.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: I remember that. For about an hour it resembled a...

TOM: Yeah. Then it slowly became round again, but it kept on gettin’ bigger. Suddenly, it developed big black spots all over it.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: The soccer-ball stage.

TOM: Yeah. Of course, by that time the situation was hopeless. Pretty soon the thing was up to the size of a basketball, and before you knew it, it had gone right past medicine ball and was headin’ for beach-ball status. They finally had to move him out of his room and put him in the gymnasium.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops

ED: Appropriate. How did he die, anyway?

JIM: They tried to operate on him, but as soon as they made an incision all the air rushed out of him. Death by deflation.

TOM: Poor guy. ED: Yeah. TOM: Hey, you know what we forgot? Lacrosse and polo.

SOARING AND PLUNGING IN THE MEDIA

One of my pet pursuits is keeping track of how the news media describe those things in the news that increase or decrease. I can generally rely on the fact that the same verbs will be used repeatedly in the same situations.