In the fall of 1997, two of my friends and I had just entered the 9th grade and, thinking ourselves quite intelligent, had signed up for our school math club together. The first competition of the year was at a local university and consisted of several tests scattered throughout the day. We all finished our last morning test and decided that although the next test was in just half an hour, we had enough time to get lunch first.

Conscious of how quickly we needed to go in order to make it back in time, we briskly set off toward the Pizza Hut conveniently located five minutes from campus on the other side of the train tracks. Just as we got close enough to be able to see the Pizza Hut sign beckoning us from across the tracks, to our dismay, the blinking lights and clanging bells in front of the railroad crossing switched on.

In the infinite wisdom of 14-year-olds, missing lunch because we were stuck waiting for a train to pass seemed like a tragedy not to be borne (never mind the tragedy of getting hit by a train). We all started running wildly for the tracks, hoping to make it before the train did.

I was the last to get to the train tracks, and it wasn’t until I was actually crossing the tracks that the panic hit. The train was moving fairly slowly as it came through town, and was probably about a hundred feet away as I cleared the tracks, but it seemed a lot closer at the time! All of a sudden, visions of tripping on the tracks or catching my foot in the rail as I leapt across and getting flattened by the train flashed through my head. Luckily, I got across safely and joined my friends on the other side.

On the way back from lunch as my friends and I laughed about the whole incident, I remember thinking how much wider the tracks seemed when we were ambling slowly across them than they had looked during my previous panicked leap. We laughed about the incident for years, but even in the midst of our teenage invincibility, we all realized just how easily we could have removed ourselves from the gene pool.

Ironically, despite demonstrating such unmistakable stupidity, we did quite well at the math competition!

Submitted on 09/04/2007

Submitted by: Kristen
Reference: n/a - personal account

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

Chip said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Glad you used the lesson wisely Kristen! Thanks for sending the story.

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Well, Kristen, it's not so much any stupidity you might have displayed (hell, we've ALL done something like that), it's the way in which you described it! It's always that "what if I trip" thing at the last second which adds excitement to an otherwise routine maneuver like crossing a total of ten feet to avoid a train! Good PA! Thanks!

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