People ask me what's wrong with the world, as if it was a large and complex calculator which cannot add two and two and arrive at the answer everyone else does. Obviously that's not the correct way to look at it, although to be fair there are some things that just don't fit in the world, people who insist on causing trouble by behaving differently to the expected norms. For example...
Back in the balmy summer of 2004 in Colorado, USA two bright teens decided to do "anonymous good deeds", and to that end they baked a batch of cookies to share amongst 9 of their neighbours. They put a message on each plate with "Have a great night. Love, The T and L Club." written on a big red heart, left the plate before the neighbour's front door, knocked and ran.
One of the neighbours, obviously unused to such spontaneous generosity, had an anxiety attack and went to hospital. Naturally, she sued the families of the precocious teens for "$3,000 to cover her medical expenses, a motion-sensor light for her porch, lost wages, and punitive damages". However, the judge saw fit to award only $900 to cover medical expenses and dismissed the rest.
In the same way that a mis-sized cog in a grandfather clock will see the time displayed becoming less and less accurate, this small out-of-place act affected larger cogs which pushed larger levers resulting in larger effects, such as television appearances, restraining orders and lost jobs.
This is the problem with mis-sized cogs, no matter how small -- the problem escalates until it effects everyone. The girls may have had good intentions, but they failed to consider how their actions could unravel the fabric of American society. The great nation of the United States of America didn't become the mindless economic and military juggernaut it is today by people being nice to each other, nor by people just giving stuff away for free.
And after all, it is natural for the neighbour in question to be scared of cookies: The TV-fed public have associated cookies with monsters for decades now, and cookies often have a high fat and carbohydrate content which may contribute to heart problems even if the mere sight of a plate of cookies being left on the front doorstep doesn't cause one to hyperventilate.
People ask me what's wrong with this world, and I tell them: Cookies.
Published by: The Peculiarist.
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