Natural Selection

Contrary to my teachers, I paid attention in school.  They thought I was busy doodling or daydreaming most of the time but, they were clearly wrong.

In fact, I’d like to use the following logical deduction to make several critical points.

Charles Darwin deftly produced Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, in 1859.  This theory states, according to the NDSU.edu website, “Phenotypic variation exists among individuals and the variation is heritable. Those individuals with heritable traits better suited to the environment will survive.”

For New Jerseyites, this is the part of school that told us why giraffes have long necks, and frogs can live on both land and in the water.

Darwin believed that creatures adapted to their environment in order to survive.  Prey became faster, by growing long legs, to outrun their predators.  Other critters grew long necks to better find edible vegetation, and other animals developed spines in order to fend off hungry cousins.

Simply put, they adapted.  Unfortunately, those traits much-needed to survive developed over time.  A long, long time.  Usually, that time stretched over several generations of not being able to outrun the next meal.

And, according to Darwin, these animals gave their lives for “the cause.”  They somehow adapted by growing bigger, stronger haunches or longer legs or metal plates or even glands to produce a noxious odor, all in the name of survival.

This is where the term “survival of the fittest” was coined.  Only the fittest of each species evolved and survived.

I don’t believe a word of that drivel since the very creatures necessary to develop and pass-on the new needed altered gene usually wound up as lunch.  Hence, the new gene was never passed on anywhere except the diner’s colon.

Still, Darwin and his supporters won out in the secular battle to teach evolution versus Creationism, in school.  Creationism is the belief that God made man and all other creatures.  A big legal battle ensued over “intelligent design” which incorporated Darwin’s ideas, all in the name of proven science.  Too bad none of what Darwin spouted was based in science.  Amen.

That being said, my sainted wife rudely interrupted my Washington Nationals game to inform me she was unable to reach the Hamburger Helper on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet.

Recalling my scholastic times doodling – er, uh – studying hard, I proudly challenged her to grow about eight inches in height, and extend her arms another three inches.  In which case, my sainted wife would be able to handily reach the much-desired Hamburger Helper, and then some.

As soon as the daggers in her eyes ceased flying, she announced that without the Hamburger Helper for dinner, I would starve to death.  With my stomach growling and gurgling, I neatly reached the top Hamburger Helper on the top shelf of the cabinet.

She was right and Darwin was wrong.  And I was fed. So much for science.