Sara’s mythological allusion goes awry

Jeremy’s girlfriend Sara means her “Achilles’ heel.”

This expression is taken from an ancient Greek myth that starts with a mother trying to protect her baby. After hearing a prediction that her son Achilles would someday die in battle, the goddess Theta took him to the River Styx and dipped his entire body into it to give him the power of invincibility.

Well, almost his entire body. She held him by the heel, which the magical waters of the Styx did not touch. Sure enough, years later Achilles was killed in battle when a poisoned arrow hit his heel.

The phrase “Achilles’ heel” now means a significant weakness that can lead to one’s downfall.

Golly, if coleslaw is Sara’s only Achilles’ heel, she won’t fall far. It might behoove her, however, to pay a bit more attention in her literature classes.

Peter Paul Reubens depicted Theta and her son Achilles’ in this painting completed around 1625. (In the distance is the ferryman Charon, who would transport the dead across the River Styx.)
Photo of oil painting by Reubens courtesy of Wikipedia

Answers to yesterday’s question:

comport – literally, to bring together; to behave in a certain manner
deport – to carry away, banish
export – to carry or send goods to another country
import – to carry into or receive goods from another country