One afternoon, while our dog Bailey and I were trapped in my home office because painters had quarantined large portions of my house, I mused on the human body. Here are the results:
Wise Design Elements of the Human Body
- Our stomachs are in front, where they serve as a visible reminder of our eating habits and don’t keep us from being able to sit on chairs
- Our hair observes the law of gravity (except for Don King’s)
- Our nostrils open on the underside of our noses so we don’t drown when it rains
- Our eyes are different colors but our teeth aren’t (somewhere I am sure teeth dyeing is a thing. I just haven’t seen it yet)
- Earwax has a purpose besides just being gross
- Hair grows out of our noses and ears but not our mouths (but it grows all around men’s mouths. I wonder if caveman …)
- We can breathe through both our mouth and nose (see the last point under “Philosophical” below)
Weird Things about the Human Body
- Every person has a unique tongue print (who figured that out and why? Are we going to start tongue-printing people now?)
- Identical twins smell the same (they look the same, too)
- Your hearing decreases when you overeat (ask me on Thanksgiving, although I probably won’t hear you)
- Women dream most frequently about frogs, worms and potted plants during their first trimester of pregnancy (if you could see me right now, you would see that I am puzzled)
- By age 60, people lose half their taste buds (as long as I lose the ones for cauliflower and brussels sprouts, I don’t care)
- The colder the room you sleep in, the higher the chance of a bad dream (poor Eskimos)
- Women have a better sense of smell than men (obviously men have evolved to a higher order so they don’t have to smell cauliflower or brussels sprouts)
Philosophical Observations (I spelt “Philosophical” correctly, or spell check is off)
- Our arms were designed so we can’t pat ourselves on the back too easily
- Our ears never stop growing. Thank goodness we don’t live to be 1000 years old.
- We have 1000 different skins in our lives and every one is the same thickness
- The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue (or is it the gluteus maximus? No, it is the tongue)
- Our eyes have to close every few seconds but our mouths don’t
- Our eyes don’t grow after birth, which makes sense.
- If we could only breath through our noses, would people still smoke?
Design Questions about the Human Body
- Why don’t teeth repair themselves when damaged (every other part of the body does)?
- Why do men have nipples? (OK, I didn’t come up with this one. There is actually a book with this title)
- Where does our belly button go inside us? The umbilical cord is cut at birth, but once it went in through our belly button, where did it go, and does it still go there?
- Why do we have butt cheeks? Seriously people…
- Do families who live in cold climates generation after generation produce offspring with more body hair for warmth (isn’t that the theory of evolution)?
- Why toenails and eyebrows?
- and goose bumps?
Suggested Improvements for the Human Body
- Add eyes to the sides and backs of our heads. Then you can test my peripheral vision whenever you want to (I spelt “peripheral” right on the first attempt!)
- Put the testicles someplace where they are safe. Please!
- Get rid of wisdom teeth. Before birth.
- We eat and breath down the same tube in our body. Let’s give each their own just in case I choke on a hot dog one day (think “Field of Dreams”)
- Make our feet A LOT BIGGER. Right now all our weight is held on 40-60 square inches.
- Extend the rib cage lower. Might as well protect as many organs as possible.
- Thicken up them bones. They’re always breaking because they are just too thin. Besides, then my guns would look bigger.
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