Frog

You just never know when some crazy piece of trivia that somehow embedded itself into your brain when you were a child will turn out to be incredibly important for impressing your wife.

For some reason there was a guy shoeing horses downtown yesterday, presumably for the benefit of the tourists. Such guys are called farriers, which the magnificent Online Etymology Dictionary tells me is from the Middle French for blacksmith, from ferrum - iron. Sweet! But that's not what we're here to talk about.

No, we're here to talk about what happened when the farrier asked the assembled crowd of dweebs, punks and losers if anybody knew the name for the triangular bit at the back of the horse's foot. It was the greatest moment of my life, because I knew the answer. I didn't squeal it out in an excitable, girlish voice, like I do at university when I know the answer. No, I took a breath, paused, and murmured nonchalantly, "The frog".

The crowd exhaled in admiration at my mastery of equine anatomy. The farrier tried to play down his disappointment that I'd stolen his thunder by saying, "There's usually someone here who knows it." But we all knew the truth - I was the star there that day. Even my Smaller Half said to me (after much prompting), "No, I wasn't surprised that you knew that, that's exactly the kind of bizarre thing that you know."

All those hours that I spent when I was a whippersnapper reading about how to shoe horses in The Handbook of Australian Bushcraft were well spent. Now, who wants to know how to make rope?