Darwin Awards: They've Earned It!


(*Don't forget tonight is new "Ghost Hunters" on SyFy*)

For those who haven’t heard of the Darwin Awards, they are posthumously awarded to people who did things that prove that only the strongest (and smartest) survive, thereby reinforcing the principals of evolution. These folks “do a service to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool.” (Wikipedia)

Here are just some of the ways in which these winners made it possible for us to evolve to the next smarter stage:

Juggling active hand grenades.
Crashing through a window to prove it was unbreakable (when it wasn’t).
Jumping from a plane to photograph skydivers without a parachute.
A cop lit a cigarette in a room full of seized explosives.


Oh, I have had quite a few…. One that sticks out in my mind is when I was about 11. I decided I could parachute off the top of my barn. I took two umbrellas and positioned myself two stories up. I considered the wind and realized it wasn’t strong enough and so I went down to the side roof that was one story up. I waited for a gust of wind and jumped. Luckily, I crumpled and rolled with the umbrellas. I managed to not stab myself or break anything, but had I not taken that one moment on the peak of the barn to use rational thought, I might be a Darwinian candidate. That was only one of many insane stunts. Somehow, even though I tend to want to do things on a whim, I still manage to have a little voice inside that contains a higher IQ that prevails.

This isn't always the case because in high school I stayed over with my girlfriends at one of our houses, a girl who lived in a very upper class neighborhood, with a pool and tennis courts and a water slide. We all got drunk because her parents were gone and then I got the great idea to go streaking around the neighborhood at night. One of my friends did too. We literally walked around the block naked at a regular pace, no big rush. Then, a car came, the lights hit us and my friend yells, "car, get out of the way!" I dive off the road and roll down a hillside into a huge cactus garden; one of every variety. From head to toe I was completely and totally covered in needles, my gums, nails; I looked like a freaking teddy bear. Luckily, still drunk enough to know something bad happened but I can't feel it. My girlfriends took tweezers and a bright light and picked them out of my ass so I could soak in a tub to get the rest out. I suppose according to Darwin, I was lucky it wasn't a cliff, huh?

Thankfully for my gifted and amazing son, I remained in the gene pool which makes me wonder about a higher power having a hand in that, because I certainly was always a risk taker.

So, what have you done that might have put you on the list?

Comments

  1. I had access to lots of tools as a youngster and very little supervision :)

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  2. Pangs;
    That explains it! Har har. I admit bringing home a snapping turtle once and scaring the bejesus out of my mother. Another time, I put on ice skates and ice skated on our 100-year-old wood floors, carving them all up. Oh, and the time I ate the sleeping pills thinking they were blue M&Ms. Oh, what about the time I tried to smoke a cigarette and dropped it from my lips when I coughed and it fell to the ground and lit the pile of trash near the barn on fire, or the time I....

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  3. Being a kid I used to est dogs food, took it from out terrier, that why i always had healthy nails and gorgeous hair. Disadvantage was that breath stunk and the bits were harsh but I learned to drink lots o water with it.

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  4. Echo;
    We so would have hung out together as kids. I thought everything was edible because we had orchards, wild berries, veggie garden, honeysuckle, sassafras root...You just reminded me of another time I brushed our german shepherds with the family toothbrushes and put them back in the sink holder....

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  5. Hmmmm....how about riding my skateboard while sitting on it going down the middle of the road with friends on a hill! Or, maybe constantly riding my ten-speed bike with no hands. That's not too bad I guess, but all I can come up with at the moment....

    Incidentally Autumn, when me and my ex-hubby were dating, we had a roommate with an unhealthy attachment to my husband and he finally pissed me off so bad that I went up to his bathroom, he had put cleaner in the toilet bowl, so I took his toothbrush and cleaned the toilet with it! I then lightly rinsed it to get the blue color off and put it back in it's holder. He never knew! ASSHOLE!

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  6. Kept off the Darwin Awards by surviving a climb of Mt. Adams in Washington State after having taken the marijuana hangover cure. Guess we all must have sobered up by the time we reached the summit. Didn't stop me from climbing throgh scree and nearly killing one on my companions. God, that was fun.

    Why is my word verif "diedi"?

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  7. I love the Darwin Awards. My favorite was always the guy who was eating beans in a poorly ventilated room and suffacated on his own farts, but that hand grenade juggler might beat the farter.

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  8. Honestly, I think I prefer to hear about the exploits of ya'all. You're a bunch of fun folks! If we were in a room together---something would catch on fire, fall down and break, neighbors would yell and bang on the walls. There'd be no peace in the city.

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  9. I'm gonna have to miss tonights episode i'm sad lol

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  10. I put a life jacket on my bicycle and rode it off a make shift ramp over a bridge and into the water.

    At twelve years old I borrowed my father's ski-doo and decided to see how fast I needed to go to make the windshield buckle.

    And interesting things happen when you shove random utensils into an electrical outlet.

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