A Tale of Impulse, Attitude and Devolution
Where I turn my car into and out of the parking lot at work there is a large double billboard. Raised only seven feet off the ground, the larger-than-necessary message has been working is subliminal magic. Mostly the message is uninteresting. I not sure what the left half is promoting; some radio station, I think… The right half is promoting the new Coca Cola Blak coffee drink. For the past two seeks I’ve been looking at the five foot lettering remembering a snippet of my wife’s conversation shortly after returning from New York last month (yes, I actually listen to her). She tasted the stuff and liked it. I’m quite the coffee guy, and never have I enjoyed Pepsi, so my subliminals were primed.
As I turn into the lot at the grocery, I park next to a blue Escort with four whip antennas stuck onto the trunk, each one a different length of curlicue. The steering wheel was covered with a faux leatherette cover with embossed and colored dragons on the sides; the rearview mirror suspended a pair of goggles like you would swim with but looking like it had been injected with steroids, upon which was clipped a CB-like handset microphone. What clinched the image for me was the lone bumper sticker: A white band with the symbol of the US Marines beside this caption – “When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight.” I thought “what kinds of sociopaths are being bred in the military?” leading me to ponder how these people try to re-assimilate themselves into society or if they ever can fit in again.
Inside the store, I gasped at the six dollars being demanded for four (count ‘em) little 8-ounce bottles of this mysterious nectar. I buy them anyway, satisfied that if I don’t like them, my wife does. I shake my head at the car with ‘tude and continue.
Two miles later, I notice two motorcyclists behind me, an overweight black man of about thirty one a rice rocket, and a skinny white guy of slightly less years – or so I guessed, his helmet with its jaw guard obscured his features - riding a vintage Honda. The black guy didn’t wear a helmet, a sight that causes my brain to label him an FOD (future organ donor). The light we awaited changed and the two cyclists abused the gaps between the four-wheeled machines to their advantage. Sometimes I forget that commuting is a sport of daring-do. This heavily traveled road cuts a swath through a forest preserve. At this point, and the helmet-head looks over his shoulder and pops a wheelie at about 55 MPH in thick traffic. He’s showing off to FOD, who wisely refuses the bait. Two more wheelies ensue, the last while he sits on the gas tank with legs splayed, all within a one mile stretch. Four lanes posted at 40 MPH – just a suggestion, as you know – with no dividing curb. A wipe out then would kill him, helmet or no. I’ll let you guess what crossed my mind then.
For those few aware people, there’s plenty of evidence of Devolution exhibited by humanity: My theory? For thousands of years, humanity became stronger through the natural process of survival against odds. For the past ten millennia or so, we have devolved because we’ve mastered our environment, slaughtered the species that occasionally fed on our young, and remade our world in our image. As time progressed traits that would have been culled in a harsher context are instead passed on, sometimes strengthened or mutated into newer quirks and conditions. The cumulative effect is easily discerned through the multiplicity of the modern human experience. In short – we’re doomed!