By Tobin Barnes
Seems this guy was flying a kite in a lightning storm, reminiscent perhaps of Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was lucky he discovered something about electricity and didn’t get knocked on his butt.
The guy I’m talking about wasn’t so lucky. He was killed. His kite had a short string lengthened with copper wire. Don’t know if this 26-year-old adventurer was trying to discover anything, but even his father said it wasn’t very smart. After all, he was an electrician.
Anyway, that stunt and his resulting demise earned him a nomination for the 2006 Darwin Awards, found at darwins.com. In the spirit of experiential education, I’ve reported on these “honors” before.
The Darwin Awards “salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it...ensuring that the next generation is one idiot smarter.”
The Darwin folks also provide a grim caveat: “Of necessity, this award is generally bestowed posthumously.”
Sounds a tad harsh and insensitive, doesn’t it. Fly a kite, die, and get a “dumb” nomination.
But then, we’ve all done dumb things--heck, off the top of my head, I can think of several potentially fatal and award-level stupid things I’ve done--and for one reason or another we’ve survived to be dumb another day. And thereby we’re allowed to re-enter the lottery yet once again. Depending on our fates, we may all have numerous more chances to be a winner.
Evidently, the above electrician, in the minds of the Darwin people, is not only distinctive as a nominee for the 2006 award, but also for serving as an involuntary lesson to the rest of us.
And the lesson? Idiocy shall be punished...however randomly...for one reason or another. After all, “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards,” according to Vernon Sanders’ Law.
Believe it or not, the electrician didn’t win the 2006 award. I guess the depths of dimness were not totally plumbed in his case.
On the other hand, the runner up from Brazil threw caution to the wind in pursuit of Darwinian notice. He, in the words of the Darwin Awards’ storytellers, earned his second-place position by trying “to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving back and forth over it with a car.”
Alas, the intended results were not realized, so he resorted to a sledgehammer, and, as the French say, Voila! He ascended, in more ways than one, to a presumably better place.
Fourteen other RPG’s lay unexploded in a nearby car. Police speculate that this was some sort of salvage effort to produce scrap metal.
Well, sledgehammer in hand, scrap metal was certainly produced.
But even this madness doesn’t compare with the 2006 Darwin Awards winners. That’s right, winners, since two people were joined in one stupid act.
The young man and woman were found inside a “deflated helium advertising balloon,” only their feet sticking out.
It’s thought they pulled the balloon down and climbed in to inhale the gas and talk funny to each other—be like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd or something.
Unfortunately, in the midst of their hilarity, they were overwhelmed by that same helium, according to the medical examiner.
A family member delivered the benediction: “Sara was mischievous, to be honest. She liked fun and it cost her.”
So let’s take the Darwin Awards for what they are—a lesson. We could all be and have been Sara, the Brazilian, and the electrician. Amen.
Well, maybe not the Brazilian.
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