My mind moves in directions other people don’t take. How else can I have kept this blog going for fourteen years?

This thought occurred to me last night.

We have the backswing and the downswing. Those two are opposites, because they take our swing in opposite directions. Shouldn’t they have opposite names?

If you like the word “backswing,” which implies that we swing back and forth, which we do, the swing part that hits the ball should be called the forthswing.

But maybe that’s awkward, so forswing. That’s awkward, too, so how about forward swing? But to be consistent, we would need to relable the backswing as the backward swing.

Hmmm… Let’s start over.

With the downsing. This one is easy. The opposite of down is up, so the downswing would be preceded by the upswing. But those might suggest swinging the club in exaggerated directions that we don’t want.

(This is turning out to be harder than I thought.)

(Five-minute pause.)

How about this? The windup and the release? Perfect description of what we do.

Except that the word “release” is already taken in golf, so we would have to come up with a new word for what it now means.

But that’s another post.