Natural Selection at Work (7/20/05)

Sometimes you can just see natural selection about to work. As I drove home from work today, I stopped at a red light on Dowling Ave. The day turned out to be nice, so I was looking around at how the newly found sunshine was pouring down on the wonderful green (and brown) Earth. It was at this moment that I saw Darwin's theory at work. (Note: I REALLY wish I had a camera for this.) I saw a man on a bicycle. He was traveling quite fast and was wearing only shorts and a t-shirt. He had no helmet on. His neck was tilted so that he could talk on a cell phone. His hand kept moving back and forth from the handle bar to the phone. It was what was in his right hand that was interesting. As this man traveled with phone in hand, he had a baby in the other. I'm not kidding. He was cradling an infant in his other hand. The baby was wearing a jumper and that was about it. Can you imagine what this guy was thinking?
I need to get to Roy's house, but I have the baby. Ok, I'll take the baby with me and ride over. Hmm, I should make sure he's there, though. Sooo I'll call him as we go.
Yup, natural selection. With the choice of road, the choice of transportation, and a squirming baby, something bad is bound to happen. I'll need to check the paper tomorrow...
The other moment occured at school today during a break between classes. One of the students was waiting outside the nurse's office, because she said she didn't "feel right." As I sat there for my lunch duty, I watched this student stare at a electrical socket. I didn't understand why. She then pulled out a metal clip from her hair and started to put it in the socket. Now a very quick dialogue shot through my head, and it went like this:
Dude, she's going to hurt herself. Stop her!
But if I don't stop her, then she'll learn a valuable lesson.
Yes, but if she remembers that you were here, you could get sued.
She can't see me....Besides I could a good laugh.
No! Now tell that girl to stop before she turns extra crispy.
And with that, I yelled down the hall, "Hey! Get that clip away from the socket before you hurt yourself!"
She just turned looked at me and said, "Huh? How could this hurt me?" Luckily the nurse came out at that point, because I just didn't have it in me to explain it to her. It was obvious that Darwin would have loved this girl.
So there you go folks. You want ways to balance out the ever-growing population of this planet? Believe me, somehow people will get themselves to shuffle off this mortal coil.