Analogize This!

Yesterday’s trail run had me thinking about how dismally I did on my SATs, precisely because of questions like this:

Treadmilling : Trail-running ::

a) Pool swim : Open Water swim

b) Pescetarianism : Veganism

c) Cat-ownership : Parenthood

d) Crocheting : Knitting

At first blush the obvious answer is a), but as I learned lo so many years ago, when it comes to analogies, the obvious answer is always incorrect.  Put simply, while the leap from treadmill to trail is significantly harder, the difficulty quotient between doing laps in a pool versus swimming the open ocean is exponential.  Obviously, this is assuming that average conditions prevail (i.e. I’m neither talking about a trail run through Death Valley on an August afternoon, nor a swim in the Atlantic during a shark migration).  In other words, yesterday morning as I was huffing up a long three-mile incline, tripping on loose rocks, dodging animal turds, and miraculously avoiding a spill that had the potential to be epic, I was thinking, At least I’m not doing a half-mile in the ocean right now. 

So b).  Also wrong, but getting closer.  As a pescetarian for many years and an accidental vegan on days when I run out of cheese, bridging the gap between seafood to a cholesterol-free diet is difficult but manageable.  But considering I’m still in the lacto-ovo world, I’m giving going full-blown vegan a bit of an edge over trail-running.

Onto d).  I can’t crochet.  My mother taught my sister how to crochet but not me.  I was left to learn how to knit from my Welsh coworker and the internet.  But since crocheting only needs one needle and knitting requires two, I’m going to say I learned the more difficult yarn craft, so there.  However, crocheting looks quite complicated and you can make fantastic circles crocheting that you cannot do with knitting, so I don’t think the learning curve is as steep between the two as it is from treadmill to trail, so quite obviously d) is the wrong answer.

Which leaves us to the correct answer, c).  Clearly if you’ve owned a cat, you can raise a child.  Between monitoring input and output, showering them with affection but disciplining them when they scratch the couch, there is very little separating a kitten and a kid.  The only difference is that a kid will eventually learn to tell you that you ruined her life, whilst a cat can only meow her disdain.  This distinction makes child-rearing significantly more difficult, just like trail-running.  And therefore your answer is c).