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j.ello | reportCommentary on the Darwin Awards |
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A Darwin Award is quite simply the last award you'll ever need. They are given to the foolishly fearless few who dare to lay it all on the line for the opportunity to serve as a lesson for the rest of us -- a reminder for all eternity. They define the moral of the story.
Darwin Award winners sacrifice what little they have upstairs to provide us, the sane majority, with examples of why we live our lives by certain rules. Their stories seem to be the clad in the fabric of myth, yet they define the scientific notion of cause and effect. They are the pinnacles of poor reasoning, they bear the sorrowful shackles of short-sightedness. They are the "that guy who's" of the funny, yet brutally exemplary, anecdotes that remind us all that we DO, in fact, have a little detector in our heads that stops us from lighting our gaseous expulsions with a match, or sticking the knife in the toaster to retrieve a stubborn bagel. They are those who give us rock hard examples of why we CAN tie rockets to our cars and fly, but shouldn't. |
They are those who show us that shotguns are not hammers, poking devices or pole vaults. They are the "Oops!" at the end of a recovered in-flight recorder tape, and they are the spirits that keep us from being the 30-second bizarre obituary blurb at the end of a TV newscast.
Darwin Awards give credence to Albert Einstein's words, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." The Darwin Awards are what little we can do to honor the memory of those who would be considered geniuses, if only fate hadn't stacked the deck against them when they said, "I'll pinch the wires together while you plug the bug wacker in!" So if you haven't been there yet, take this time to visit the Darwin Awards and revel in the rise and demise of the not-so wise. May your decision-making skills benefit from their sacrifice. Copyright
Jeffrey J. Ello
October 1999
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