Letting fancy take wing and putting the obvious and mundane possibilities aside for the moment I have asked myself, now you don’t suppose Bush and Bin Laden are simply bored, do you? Pushing the envelope for the sake of feeling alive is not just for fighter pilots, the rich and famous or thrill-seeking daredevils, many of us ordinary mortals do so to relieve boredom. We humans are not wired for boredom, and even cats have a reputation for needing nine lives because of curiosity. However, most people have a sense of self-preservation that prevents them from taking unnecessary risks. Still, many qualified to say so will point to war being the ultimate aphrodisiac. There are few experiences to equal kill or be killed for thrills. Yet, there is no discounting stupidity that may lend itself to a few thrills as well. There has never been a lack of Dee Dee’s in Dexter’s laboratory looking at a button wondering what that thing will do, and pushing the button.

My not having yet achieved the status of those luminaries receiving a Darwin Award is really frustrating to me. I have worked hard for this award, I deserve it, and despite my many efforts have thus far been thwarted of winning this distinction I so richly deserve. It is more than enough to question whether the gods favor some over others, or even whether they might have a sense of humor and get a laugh about my efforts directed toward winning this particular award. I can imagine the deities nudging each other, exclaiming “Hey, get a load of what this guy is trying to do this time!”

Sigh. Regardless the many times I have failed there is no question in my mind, the gods notwithstanding, that I will press on, and I have accepted a nearly fatalistic attitude toward doing stupid things that should terminate my tenure in the land of the living. I do maintain some hope. If someone like Steve Fossett may have pulled it off so can I. More than one smart person has occasioned their demise by doing something really stupid.

Some accuse religious people of being stupid, but the attraction of various myths and superstitions leading to so many among even the most well educated engaging in things like religious observances, séances and astrology has its basis in being removed from the ordinary. Most of us want to spice up our lives with a little variety, most of us want to believe there is substance to the stories of ghosts and goblins in some form or another. But whatever the beliefs the Golden Rule is one that distinguishes between good people and bad no matter what the beliefs otherwise.

However, I also have to accept that if the gods have a sense of humor, if some like to play tricks with us humans, there is the possibility some of us may be more favored of the gods than others. Apart from my efforts to win a Darwin Award earning some laughs among the gods I have survived several incidents that should have been terminal and were the fault of others. After each of these I have been left asking why so many die from such things and I continue to cumber the earth?

Most of us enjoy a thunderstorm, the magnificent display of lightning and Nature’s Fury unleashed. The movie Twister was one most of us enjoyed and many could relate to those storm chasers, though common sense tells us there is much danger involved when we go out in such weather, and tragedies involving lightning strikes remind me of an incident during the time I was a boy living on the mining claim.

It was a warm, sultry and overcast day. I was fishing with a telescoping, steel fishing rod and wading in a creek near the claim when a dazzlingly, near blinding, brilliant blue wide sheet of lightning whipped alongside the stream of water to my right. It snapped off the branches of trees and bushes next to me little more than an arm’s length away with a cracking sound like large caliber pistol shots, and the pungent smell of ozone from the instantly ionized air engulfing me was searing powerful. I stood transfixed in the water, dumbfounded, looking at the steel rod I was holding. Why hadn’t the lightning struck me? Here I was standing in water with this long steel pole in my hands, all the conditions necessary for me to have been struck dead by that massive bolt!

However, I lived to tell about it, and it makes it all the more confounding why some die and some do not. While science provides some answers, there are still too many anomalies and questions that defy scientific explanation. Perhaps “The Force” is with some and not with others. At the point where science fails to provide answers, speculation takes over. Lincoln was far from being alone in expressing uncertainty over which side of an issue God favors, and there is certainly ongoing speculation over the question of why so many evildoers seem to prosper and go unpunished. Perhaps there is, as I have speculated, more than one spiritual “force” humankind has to deal with.

While I am grateful to George Lucas for his films, it is doubtful he knew Emerson had already written of “The Force” long before Star Wars. But when the phrase “The Force be with you” popped up in his films I knew Emerson had long before anticipated Lucas. As Chairman of the Board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation he should be aware of Emerson preceding him, and give that great American intellectual credit for this idea.

But as a force, weather is something over which we have little control, apart from us humans fouling our own nest, and if you are going to be out and about in threatening weather you take your chances with Nature. Children especially are at risk since they love being out of doors and playing in the rain, splashing in puddles and just being children.

The very day I received my Daisy Red Ryder Carbine lever action BB gun which I had earned selling Cloverine Salve and garden seed door to door in Little Oklahoma, I was understandably anxious to try it out, and my brother Ronnie was excited about going with me. The wide open expanses of the tumbleweed dotted alkali fields surrounding our neighborhood beckoned us to get out there and start plinking away.

It was turning into a humid day. There were some high, cumulus clouds just beginning to form and if we were really lucky we might get one of the summer storms I thoroughly enjoyed; one with a lot of thunder and lightning and huge raindrops that would explode into small alkali puffs and geysers when they pelted the dry dust.

The scent of fresh rain mixing with the earth was always a heavenly aroma to me. And we would have an abundance of fresh mud puddles to stomp in barefoot and feel the delightful squish of the mud between our toes. If the puddles of water were large enough, I would fashion small boats of balsa and rig tiny sails to send them scudding swiftly across the water. I had even made some with rubberband powered paddles, much like the rubberband powered cars I could make with empty thread spools. You notched the outer rims of the spools to give them traction, and if you made them just right they could scoot as fast as the spring-wound, store-bought tin racing cars.

But of course if a storm developed, Ronnie and I would have to cut our safari short and get back pronto. I knew better than to risk being out in an open field with lightening about, especially carrying a built-in lightening rod like the Carbine would become. You see, I knew about the hazards of lightning long before the incident while wading in the stream with that steel fishing rod. Stupid.

Grandma had told us many stories of dreadful storms in places like Kansas where she had lived. She told us of tornadoes, twisters with winds that were so fierce they would drive stalks of hay into telegraph poles like nails. I recalled once more the story of her seeing a mule standing in a field after such a storm with a fence rail driven through it.

I always wished I could witness such a powerful storm. Sometimes I would watch a dust devil on the alkali fields and wish it would grow up and become a real Twister. But then I would feel guilty if such a thing caused real damage or hurt someone. Funny how many things like this troubled me; wanting adventure and excitement, but not wanting such things to cause harm. Too bad, I often thought, that we can’t really save our cake and eat it too.

But there it is; Nature seems often capricious; and while we may enjoy the outdoors and thunderstorms, danger lurks no matter our personal innocence. Well, perhaps unless “The Force” is with you. But then, the Court Jester has favor with the king only so long as he can entertain the king. I sometimes wonder whether humankind is intended for the amusement of the gods; and at what point they may cease to be amused. The history of lunatics being favored of the gods is a long one, and there seems no want of lunatics among leaders in the world today, though I have good reason to believe the gods do not find them funny. In fact, they may yet prove to be the real contenders for the ultimate Darwin Award when the mushroom clouds begin to dot the landscape.

Steve Fossett was (is?) a determined man, an adventurer and thrill-seeking daredevil. He was determined to lead a life less ordinary, to never be bored and wring out of life what he could. But when those with the power to kill millions of people are determined to do so, pushing the envelope in order to make their own lives less ordinary and relieve their boredom by taking enormous risks with the lives of millions, we can be excused for thinking they are quite literally insane. And there is no lack of mad men in power, of those like Patton who love the smell of battle, of those who love the smell of Napalm in the morning.