Chalaza

So, a friend of mine and I are in this bar, right, not a pub kind of bar, a nice clean California non-smoking wine bar, friendly and with insanely good chocolate cake. Sitting next to us are some Friday-night regulars - nice, stocky middle-aged men having dinner and chatting with the woman behind the counter, who they obviously know well. They get in a friendly dispute of some sort and she reaches over near the cash register and hauls out this monster Thing of a dictionary and heaves it over to give to the man nearest us.

Shameless eavesdropping on my part yields the information that they are looking for the word "chalant", as in nonchalant, to see if it has a meaning outside the prefix. It doesn't, but they guy with the dictionary looks up and says, "Hey, that's a cool word," and my nosy self says, "What is?"

"Chalaza," says he. "Do you know what a chalaza is?" I shake my head but his companion turns around. "Oh yeah, it's that part of the egg that is attached to the shell," he volunteers. WTF?! We all gape at him. "How did you know that?" his friend asks. He turns to the woman behind the counter and the rest of us. "How did he know that?! This guy has this wierd untapped depth of trivia! Chalaza!"

"Oh," says the woman behind the counter, "It's like Flowers for Algernon." I stare at her blankly, sure I have no idea what she's talking about. She steeples her fingers meaningfully, at right angles, looking slyly at the knowledgeable man. "He's peaking."

I haven't laughed so hard in ages.