Most people like surprises. Not the surprise of a dead battery or a leaky pipe, of course, but an unexpected phone call from a friend or a check in the mail is a nice treat that makes the day go better. The enjoyment of surprise is one of the things that originally interested me in science. I can remember as a high school freshman in general science being surprised by what the inside of a turtle looked like, by the properties of the metal sodium, by the fact that someone could explain to me how poisons work. And science has kept on surprising me ever since. Biology, because it deals with living creatures that are always unpredictable, especially attracted me. It seemed the most surprising science of all, and I've never changed that opinion because I keep coming across amazing ideas, including the ones in this column. An idea can be surprising for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that it's completely new. The freshness of the idea is what fascinated me about an article that explores the similarities between females with anorexia nervosa and certain male athletes who are called obligatory runners (The New England Journal of Medicine, February 3, 1983). They share similar family and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as personality traits such as repressed anger, high self-expectation, tolerance of physical discomfort, and a tendenMaura C. Flannery is Associate Professor of Biology at St. John's University, Jamaica, NY 11439. She earned a B.S. in biology from Marymount Manhattan College and an M.S., also in biology, from Boston College. Her major interest is in communicating science to the nonscientist. She has developed a biology course for criminal justice majors as well as courses in reproductive biology and in the future impact of biological research.