As a busy young socialite of wealth and taste, I used to be chauffeured back and forth to high school in a limousine. The driver, as was proper, piloted the sleek craft without speaking to me: the very picture of high-class professionalism. The limo? Well, it was a stretch, of course. Very long, with plenty of seats. Rich upholstery. Very shiny. Very…yellow.
Okay, okay, so it was actually a school bus. I wasn’t wealthy or tasteful. I didn’t have my license during high school, and I was shuttled there and back on the bus. There, happy? May I finish my story now? Yeesh!
Every day I rode the bus (which was indeed the long version, thank you), and so did two girls who would always sit a few rows in front of me. Both were cute, and therefore completely outside my capacity to ever try to speak to…just like many other girls. Most days I didn’t pay too much attention to them, a favor they returned in spades as they gossiped and giggled and did their own thing. That is, they did so until one particular afternoon when I made to get off at my stop and things went gruesomely wrong.
Tell me if this has ever happened to you: You’re going along on your way, doing nothing all that special. The next thing you know, you are acting on a sudden irrational impulse, a spontaneous burst of uncontrollable whimsy: one which, if you had even an extra half second to think further, you’d realize is an extremely stupid thing to do, and you’d hold yourself back. By the time you do realize, however, it’s too late. It comes on so fast that you don’t think, you just do. It’s like a subatomic particle of idiocy exploding in your head, compelling you into an unwise act with the same irresistible forces that bind the very Universe together. I call it quantum stupidity.
This was what happened to me as I reached the end of the aisle and rounded the corner to dismount. In the next moment I was sailing through the air, but let’s slow down time and examine more deeply that tiny instant in between. I was turning that corner, looking down the steps to the asphalt below, and into my mind rushed the idea that I would look really cool if I jumped over the steps and landed on the street below.
This, of course, was a very, very stupid idea. Even if the angle involved had made such a trajectory physically possible, there’s little chance that the young ladies I meant to impress would have noticed or cared. But these were truths I pondered later on, while wearing that snug, cozy garment we call “hindsight”. Long before that, I had already launched myself from the top step.
I had just an instant in mid-air to grasp the terrible mistake I’d made before smacking my forehead on the green pad bolted over the top of the doorway. My inertia then catapulted the rest of my body out from under me, I did a sort of quarter flip, and landed on the pavement, right on my ass.
The first thing I did in those confused moments after I landed was to listen for the inevitable gails of laughter from everyone on the bus. When these did not come, I was allowed – for a very brief moment – to hope that nobody had seen. But no sooner were the first waves of relief lapping at my ankles than I heard behind me the surprised voice of the bus driver, who had naturally witnessed all of this, cry out, “Are you all right, honey?”
Naturally, this drew the attention of anyone on the bus who had not been paying attention, and they doused me in the burning acid of their scornful laughter in one crushing torrent that broke upon me like a tidal wave of humiliation. I picked myself up off my smarting butt, dusted down, and muttered that I was fine.
Suddenly a new thought entered my still-spinning brain: damage control. Yes! Not that many kids were on that bus! Contain the spread of the infection! Convince them all somehow that you did not just do something asinine! Save your dignity! But as I spun around, the door of the bus unfolded shut, muffling the snickers and giggles from within. The engine rumbled and the bus sped off in order to circulate, virus-like, the news of my embarassing display to all the kids’ friends.
Please, gentle reader, let this be a lesson to you. Beware. The forces that spin the web of our galaxy are esoteric and strange, and science is only now coming to form rudimentary theories about the phenomenon of quantum stupidity. Until we know more, please carry in your head this one guiding principle that may protect you from this dangerous event: The chicks are not interested.
