Have You Ever Wondered?

"Psst! Jenny…JENNY! Go forward seven more paces . A bit further… there you go. That bush should provide adequate cover. Stand-by for further orders". Lorraine, the one in charge, cocks her head to the left. "Audrey! Take the 11 o’clock route, and take position behind that tree. Await further orders".

Lorraine takes a look around and patiently waits. She awaits patiently. Timing is everything.

A few minutes passes, and just as Lorraine expected, the target arrives. She looks at her subordinates. Both of them could never be more ready. She signals to them with military-like body movements, "Spotted target at 12 o’clock. It should not take us long to take this one down. I will get as close as possible, then pounce. As the target flees, the both of you ambush it from the flanks. Timing is all important - wait for my signal. I cannot stress how much this means to the king. We shall not fail - we CANNOT fail, our lives depend on this". Her gaze leaves her fellow clan members. The operation is underway.

Just 5 minutes before, the target was enjoying playing with his friends and extended family. In this community, everyone knows everyone else, and if you don’t greet your neighbour accordingly, it reflects particular badly on you, and your family. A good thing then, that Ben has excellent memory. "Hello Mrs. Tan, how are you today? You are looking particularly well this season! Oh hello Mr. Anderson, that’s quite a nice haircut you have. Greetings Aunty Alice, thank you for the curry you made the other day". Once his end of the formalities have been completed, the dreaded moment arrives - it is now their turn to reply. He has never learned how to defend himself against this onslaught, so all he does now is to stand still and hope that they get bored with him very quickly. Aunty Alice starts first. "Awwww how cutee! How old are you now? 4 weeks?" "No aunty, I am nearly 5 weeks now", Ben replies, while rubbing his now bruised cheeks. One down, two to go. "Wow, you’re really tall now huh? The last time I saw you, you were this small!" says Mr. Anderson, while raising his paw about 1 foot above the ground. Ben eyes Mr. Anderson’s paw very closely. Please please, just put that paw right down. Oh no… NOOOOOOOOO…. "Arrghh no no…NOT THE HAIR!!!". But its too late now. Fourty minutes grooming his hair has now all gone down the drain. Throbbing painful cheeks, totally messy hair, Ben felt violated. But he still had to put a fake smile on. It couldn’t get any worse. But of course it did. Before he could recover, Mrs. Tan’s huge gaping mouth accelerated at light speed towards him. This is what approaching a black hole in a spaceship must feel like. Sluurrpp…."YUCKKKKKK!". "What a fine beast you will be when you grow up. Fine indeed! Perhaps I can even convince you to mate with my daughter?" Mrs. Tan says, while cleaning the lipstick from Ben’s cheeks. Ben better get out of there, quick! "Speaking of your daughter, is Susan around?" Ben asks. Mrs. Tan points over to a patch of grass about a hundred metres away, while she returns to talking to the rest of the adults.

The target hurdles along towards the patch of grass. The grass is not looking too enticing, the weather has been particularly hot and dry, and its taking its toll on the fields. It is overcrowded, and its starting to smell as well. He pauses and looks around. Yellow grass everywhere. As far as the eye can see. Except there. Hmm. "Hey Susan! SUSAN!!". Susan looks up, "What? I can’t hear you!" "Hey Susan! Let’s go play by that tree over there. It looks much cooler and the grass looks much tastier! Let’s go!". "What?? WHAT?? I can’t hear you!" Susan yells in reply. What is this idiot Ben up to now?

Ben walks tentatively towards the long green grass. Why hasn’t anyone else come to eat and play here Ben wonders. Oh nevermind. Should he wait for the rest? Oh no.. this grass is too yummy to be shared with anyone else. This has to be the best grazing grass in the world! As Ben stuffs himself silly with food, little does he know that four metres away, a group of lions, hiding in the very food he is feasting on, lie in wait. They are waiting for the right prey, the right moment. Well, they found it. The prey is here, the time is now.

Lorraine leaps from the grass and darts straight towards the poor unprepared wildebeest. Ben looks up, grass hanging out from his mouth like a stubborn mountain climber that doesn’t want to give up, and for a split second, wonders what the object hurtling towards him is. Hmm, what kind of creature is that? Doesn’t look like any creature I’ve ever seen. Strange looking wildebeest this guy is. Then someone yells from far away. "LION! LIONNNNN!!!" Oh, so this is what a lion looks like. Before Ben manages to decide on the best course of action to take against a marauding pride of lions, he spits out the food from his mouth with such force that it seems to propel him backwards, away from the lions, and his legs speed him away with such force that the earth seems to tremble with surprise. Of course, the trembling may have something to do with the fact that the other one million wildebeest are also running away, but no matter. Ben was running FAST. So fast that when Ben looked down, the ground made many parallel lines. "Hmm, I’m going at warp speed!" Ben proclaims.

Ben, being preoccupied by the remarkable movement of the ground, never once looks back. He runs and runs, just like in that movie. Keep on running Ben! And don’t look back. That tactic works well, until he spots another one of those lion looking creatures coming from his right. Well, two against one - this is hardly fair, but Ben is never one to shy away from a challenge. I’ll just run to the left then, Ben thinks aloud, while feeling proud of his tactical nous. Of course, he never expected to see ANOTHER freaking lion jumping out from the tree on his left as well. Who would have known that these lion creatures were so shrewd? Feeling outsmarted, Ben mentally gave up. He couldn’t be bothered planning a new escape route. Ok lion, let’s see how strong you really are. Ben, having realised that he only has control of the direction of his trajectory, and not his speed, decides to attack the lion head on.

The lion in question, is of course, Audrey. She must have dropped her knickers when she realised how easy this hunt was going to be. A nice fresh plump wildebeest, running TOWARDS her instead of away??! It could not get any easier. She wants to get this over and done with as soon as possible. She charges. The prey closes his eyes. Audreys nails extend, and her shoulders tense up, ready to swing her mighty paws.

There can only be one outcome.

Audrey, not spotting the nail on the ground, trips on it and falls to the ground. Ben escapes with soiled underwear, but otherwise unharmed. The lionesses rue another easy prey that got away.

Obviously, this never happens in real life. In real life, like I just saw on a documentary on TV, lions simply never trip and fall. Neither do cheetahs, nor tigers, not even bulky elephants nor giraffes. Only us humans do. And we do it all the time.

A bit of concrete sticking out of the pavement. Whoops. We fall. Of course, we don’t always fall flat on our faces. We hardly ever fall on our bums. But we often do the oopps-I-nearly-fell fall. You know the one. The one where one foot only swings halfway and suddenly stops. The one where your top half of the body, for a moment, decides that it doesn’t want to wait for the bottom half of your body. The one where you look like you just kicked an imaginary ball of steel. The one where one foot has learned how to walk properly  but the other leg decides to skate along the ground without the aid of wheels. The one which makes you look like a complete idiot.

But why do we trip so often? Surely there could not be more ideal surfaces to walk on than our roads, walkways, and pavements? Surely it would be easier to trip and fall on a rocky, dirty, dusty, savannah plain with its various protruding tree roots and elephant droppings than a flat pavement? Have we become so lazy that we have forgotten how to walk properly?

So, the next time you trip on a nail, or a bit of protruding concrete tile, or whatever, while holding a cup of hot coffee (like I just did the other day), just remember, at least you did not fall down embarassingly while on TV like poor Audrey did…

Now let’s clarify something right from the start - I am not one of those people who go around saying ‘Oh how cute’ in a high pitched whining voice everytime I see something small sized and/or furry. In fact, I hate the word ‘cute’. I’ve been called that so many times in my life that I am utterly fed up of it (I never turn down a good opportunity for self appreciation). I especially hate those Japanese products with pictures of anatomically incorrect animals, excessive use of the colour pink and extremely creative names like ‘Hello Kitty’. Get stuffed.

But even I’ll have to admit, I find puppies cute. Look at the picture below, unremorsely stolen from another website. Surely even the hardiest, most Mike-Tyson-esque person will find the puppy cute.

But why? Why are puppies cute? Do other animals find puppies cute as well? Or is it just a human emotion?

If cuteness is universal, one would be tempted to wonder whether cuteness is a survival tactic, be so cute that no one would harm you. It would certainly work, to some extent, on humans. How many people you know would kill a puppy?

But if cuteness was a survival tactic, why aren’t animals smart enough to stay cute all their lives? Kittens are reasonably cute. Lions are not. Perhaps then, being small is a pre-requisite. It seems that way at first hand, doesn’t it? On many occasions you would be able to see flocks of women moan ‘how cutteeeee’ when they see small t shirts, small shoes, small anything. The smaller the object, the longer the ‘how cute’ whine and the bigger the sigh at the end. So, we can almost conclude, small = cute. So, its not a matter of how old an animal is, but how small it is. After all, even an adult penguin can look cute whereas a baby ox looks horrible.

But wait. That’s not the end of it. If small = cute, then insects should be SUPER cute. Hands up anyone who finds that cockroaches are cute (You! The smart alec at the back there, put your bloody hand down). Or spiders? Ants? Fleas? Didn’t think so.

So, small isn’t necessarily cute. (That’s a relief, that would mean I wouldn’t have to take it personally when I zipped down my pants the other day and this hot hot hot laydee said ‘how cuteeeee’).

If not because they are small, then why are puppies cute? The answer then, is probably because they are weak and vulnerable. A weak and vulnerable puppy, whos lost his mother, will more likely be ‘adopted’ by another dog if (s)he is cute. It works just as well on humans too. If you had to choose a baby for adoption from a list of photographs, you’d pick the cute one, wouldn’t you? After all, who wants an ugly baby?

So, in the end, cuteness is a survival strategy. Cute puppies survive.

P.S. To all you ugly people out there, this is good news. It means you are the unique minority out there that has survived even though the odds are stacked against you. Congratulations!

Testosterone-deficient people may not know this, but having a moustache and a beard to boot can be annoying indeed. Think about it - fluffy black stuff all over your mouth and face. Why is it there? Besides as a prop for chubby leaders to twist at world domination meetings, there is no real use for it. It doens’t look particularly good. It tickles. It collects bits and pieces of food and other debris (God knows where else you put your mouth), and collects froth of beverages, especially beer, making you look like a total idiot (if you aren’t one already for actually trying to keep one). Whenever you blow your nose you have to use double the amount of tissues, once to wipe your nose and another to scrub your moustache.

It’s not as if a moustache and a beard is easy to maintain as well. There is a whole industry borne out of the need for testosterony people (like myself!) to aid them in their facial-hair-care. There are machines with various rotating components (some come with one, others come with two or three - in menspeak, the more rotating devices you have, the better it is!) that shear short facial hair right off, while rubbing your skin into a nice red rash. Other shaving products include the regular old razor blade, which has the dual purpose of not only cutting facial hair, but of cutting random chunks of skin as well. These blades also come with a varying number of blades, starting with the single blade to the super duper all conquering quadruple blade, because its fairly obvious that we need a shaving device that cuts the same strand of hair four times for it to be effective. On the lowest end of the scale is the basic kitchen knife, which not only is economical, but efficient at removing both hair and layers of skin from any surface. After all, humans have a few layers of skin, why not give the lower layers a chance to bask in the sunlight? And let’s not forget the shaving cream, whos sole purpose is to cover the face with an opaque layer so that the shaver has no clue where (s)he is shaving.

But we are no where near solving the question at hand. Why do we have a moustache? Does it perform a function much like our eyebrows, in that it protects the mouth from falling pieces of dust and debris? Perhaps, but if that’s the case, then why don’t (all) women have a moustache? Do they prefer the taste of random bits of falling debris and dust?

Perhaps it does not have any function at all. Perhaps its just remnants of our evolutionary cousins, the chimpazee? Yes yes, I’m liking this very much. But then this leads us to two potentially troubling conclusions :

1) Moustaches prove that evolution exists and therefore we can say for certain we came from chimps

and

2) Men are more like chimps than women

Hmm. Either way, its not looking good for men with moustaches.