Copyright © 2002 by Gene Michael Stover. All rights reserved. Permission to copy, store, & view this document unmodified & in its entirety is granted.
It's a well-unknown fact that the human skull was originally designed as a container for marbles. The problem is that it didn't work very well. It had too many fragile details, no easy-access features such as a lid, & no one could figure out what they were supposed to do with the eye sockets.
Rather than scrap the expensive manufacturing & assembly equipment it had foolishly purchased before ensuring that the skull was a well-designed marble container, the company quickly shifted marketing direction & began selling the skull as a container for another newly designed invention that was having problems of its own: the human brain.
For better or for worse, the two products have enjoyed a symbiotic market dominance ever sense.
By Gene Michael Stover. Thursday, 26 September 2002. Inspired by a comment my brother made in an e-mail message.
A long time ago, some nomadic primitive people - or cavemen, if you prefer - were in search of a cave to keep them warm in the coming night. They found one, but when Braum, Gladys, & Eustace, their leaders, stuck their heads into it to see what was there, it wasn't but a few seconds before they all jumped away. Gladys & Eustace were shaken enough by whatever had been in the cave, shivering with disgust, but Braum was affected the worst. He was the biggest, strongest, & toughest of the tribe, but he was on his knees, shaking in fear & retching. What was in that cave?
Grunge, a young upstart in the group, handsome enough but unable to get any of the ladies to sleep with him around the fire at night because he smelled worse than anyone else, had a hunch that it was something wonderful, so he peeked into the cave. ``Hey! Bodies!'' he shouted. ``I love these!'' & with that, he dove into the cave.
Gladys & Eustace couldn't believe their eyes. (Braum wouldn't have, either, but he was too busy puking to notice.) They sternly told everyone else in the group to stay away from the cave, then they went to see what was up with Grunge. They peeked into the horror-filled cave again.
This time, it wasn't so bad for Gladys & Eustace because they already knew that there were the bodies of five dead people & their dog in the cave. They had been dead for only a day or two, but they had been ill, so the place had stunk even before they died. Their small group had contracted a deadly disease from a water hole because no one in the group had noticed that the water hole stank. (As it happened, Braum's tribe had come across the same putrid water hole, but everyone in the group - except for Grunge - had thought it smelled too horrid to drink from. Grunge hadn't noticed the smell, but he hadn't been thirsty, so he hadn't cared. Of course, no one in Braum's tribe new about disease or knew where these bodies had been, so they would never know that they had easily escaped the same fate which had killed these other people.) Anyway, back to Gladys & Eustace looking into the cave to see what Grunge was up to.
Gladys & Eustace saw that Grunge was feeling & poking all the bodies. At first, they thought he might be scavenging for useful tools, & they weren't sure they would want to carry tools that had touched anything that smelled so bad & looked so dead that it made their spines tingle. Then Grunge stopped feeling the bodies. He had found what he wanted, the plumpest, softest body of them all. He sat in front of it, facing the now-cold fire pit & turned his torso to face the former person. He fluffed it up in much the same way that people today fluff the pillows at the head of their beds. Then he relaxed & slumped back on the body. He noticed a leg of the former tribe's most recent kill next to him. Gladys & Eustace could tell that if they were close enough to smell it, it would make them retch, but Grunge wasn't upset by the smell or the greenish appearance at all. He took a bit, swallowed, smiled real big, & waved a friendly invitation to Gladys & Eustace at the entrance.
Gladys & Eustace left the cave mouth & returned to their people. They ignored Grunge when he called ``Hey, where are you going?'' after them. Braum was standing again. They all agreed to keep looking for another cave.
Grunge, comfortable against a soft, diseased body, was perplexed, even disappointed, that his tribe hadn't appreciated the luxury that was now his. Then he thought ``All the more for me!'' & at his fill of greenish stinky two-day-old kill.
With his appetite gone (a luxury in those days), Grunge fell happily asleep with one corpse as his pillow & another under his feet. He awoke sweaty, with a belly ache & the chills. They only got worse. He died a day later, leaving no little baby Grunges to mourn him.
Gladys, Eustace, Braum, & the rest of the tribe with the sensitive noses & general dislike & fear or rotting, diseased things, found a clean cave before they froze to death. The successfully evaded many stinking water holes in their lives & made many babies.
Everyone alive today is descended from Gladys, Eustace, Braum, & the rest of their tribe of people, the toughest of whom could be nauseated & repulsed in convulsive fear by the sights or smells of bad water holes or diseased meat.
And that, friends, is why bodies make you shiver.