There are moments during the course of a relationship in which a man is asked questions that put his systems on high alert and send the red alert klaxons echoing through the command post that is his brain, sending him scurrying out of the room with his tail tucked between his legs and looking for a place to hide. Oddly enough, this was not one of them.
My wife and I were watching a program about the animals that had preceded the dinosaurs. You don’t hear much about those critters in school. If I were to draw a timeline of history based on what I learned in school, it would be delineated thus:
Planet Earth forms
Primitive bacteria spontaneously arrive
Plants arrive
Dinosaurs arrive
Dinosaurs die, mammals take over
Rise of Man
Obviously, there’s a lot of blanks to fill in. You never hear about the giant arthropods of the Silurian Period, for example. These were scorpions about eight feet long that could live both on land and in water. Now there’s a villain to put into a horror movie, or a science fiction flick.
Anyhow, the Discovery channel put out a show called “Before the Dinosaurs,” about all these weird animals. We were enthralled by the mating rituals of some pre-reptile amphibian/fish, and my wife said, “I don’t know how we evolved from those things. If we were those things once, would you find me attractive?”
For some reason, almost immediately after she asked the question, her hand went to her forehead, and she began muttering to herself, “Why did I go there? Why? Why?”
I, of course, took no time to answer. “Of course, dear. I’d be the one saying ‘Woo-hoo, baby! Show me that tail!’” This was followed by more head-shaking and forehead-rubbing, so I continued. “Come on, baby! Let me see that leg! Goes all the way from your hip to the ground, doesn’t it? Check out my dorsal spikes! Seen any like that lately?”
As an atheist, I’m all about evolution. I don’t think we were created from clay, and I’m not going for the whole “intelligent design” thing, either. But she’s got a point, I think. I’m not sure what the male found attractive back in those days. Perhaps it was the tail. Maybe it was the leg. Maybe it was just the instinct to mate that brought them together.
On the other hand, do you think the female fish/amphibian ever asked her mate, “Is my tail fat?” Do you think he ran and hid when he heard that?
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