Hide the cupcakes!
I have often been accused by my children of worrying too much.
“You’re going to catch a cold,” I’d tell my teenagers as they ran out the door to catch the school bus, coatless, in the middle of January.
“I’m fine,” they each replied. “Don’t worry.”
“Watch out for deer when you’re driving after dark,” I’d say when they got their drivers’ licenses. “They’ll jump out right in front of the car.”
“Mom, don’t worry,” they said.
“Don’t date vampires,” I warned them.
Groans from the kids.
For the record, however, I would like to point out that there is one thing I never worried about: that aliens would destroy us because of global warming.
No, I have not stumbled upon another conspiracy website. I have simply read about a study produced last year by a team of NASA scientists. It’s titled “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis.” One of the speculations of the study is that one day, environmentally responsible aliens will throw up their appendages (or whatever they have) in dismay at how poorly humans have managed the earth’s resources and wipe us out before we trash the rest of the universe.
Sounds about right to me. I totally believe that actions have consequences. You don’t wear a coat in winter, so you get a cold. You don’t watch for deer; they hit your car. You generate too many greenhouse gases, then of course aliens will smack you down. This is obvious stuff. But it’s not something I worry about.
What does worry me about this study (which, incidentally, I sure hope I didn’t help pay for through my taxes), is that these so-called galactic experts demonstrate a horrendous lack of knowledge about extraterrestrials. For instance, the study notes that aliens “could attack and kill us, enslave us, or potentially even eat us.”
Come on, guys. Everyone knows that aliens won’t eat us. Use us as host organisms or enslave us – sure. But eat us? No way. If an extraterrestrial is smart enough to figure out how to find us and visit us in our teeny, tiny spot in the universe, it’s got to be way too intelligent to eat humans who ingest processed cheese spread and Hostess cupcakes.
Wait a minute. I love Hostess cupcakes. I bet aliens would love Hostess cupcakes, too. Maybe that’s why they’d destroy humans – they want the cupcakes for themselves. Am I making myself a target when I buy them?
And my kids say I worry too much….
