|
Reader question: What does this sentence – If you do things as well as he has, you maybe deserve a victory lap or two – mean? My comments: Here, the speaker is encouraging you to perform – perform well and get recognized for it. A victory lap is otherwise known as a lap of honor, referring originally to a runner running around the track after winning a race in a sports meet. Lap refers to circling the track once. One journey. The track length in the Olympics is 400 meters, for instance. The 10,000-meter race will therefore take 25 laps to complete. When winners come back to the field to run another lap, it’s called a lap of honor because it is literally a lap run in order for the audience to cheer in honor of the winner. It’s the same as singers going back to the stage for an encore, or encores if the hysterical audience really holler for it. Anyways, in the top example, I see two things for “you”. And there’s good news, as well as bad news. Bad news first. The bad news is you haven’t done anything yet. Perhaps, “he”, the other person being spoken of, has done something remarkable – not necessarily on the race track. Can be anything, getting good grades in an exam, winning a singing contest, writing good poems. Anything. And he wins praises from the speaker. You don’t get similar praises heaped on you and you wonder why. The speaker explains, pointing out that you haven’t done anything as well as the other person has. Therefore, the upshot is that you don’t deserve getting praised. No bragging rights. | 
