How Life Began on Earth

Have I ever told you my theory about how life came to be on Earth? No? Okay, here goes:

Everybody’s heard lots of theories, and those who are smarter than I am theorize that the chemical soup was just right at the right time, and some kind of energy burst (say, a lightning bolt) caused them to bond together into some sort of bacteria that divided and conquered and eventually morphed over millions, perhaps billions of years, into us.

Then of course, there’s that “So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing” belief.

My take on it, however, is that billions of years ago, a space vehicle full of refugees from another cosmic world was passing our solar system on its way to the outer edges of the ever-expanding universe. Maybe they were escaping a tyrannical ruler, maybe they were just explorers. Who knows? Actually, who cares?

The point is that, no matter what planet you’re from, everybody makes garbage. And consequently, everybody has to get rid of the garbage. That’s what the Garbage Disposal Shuttle is for. Everybody knows that.

Anyway, when the refugees (or whatever) passed our solar system, they needed to get rid of their garbage. So they filled up their Garbage Disposal Shuttle and sent it out to dump the garbage where it would get sucked into, and consumed in flames by, our sun.

However, instead of sending out an experienced Senior Waste Disposal Engineer/Pilot, they decided to give their young Apprentice Waste Disposal Engineer/Pilot some experience and assigned him the task. Never mind that he sported a spinal stripe Mohawk and had Velupian rings hanging from his elbow ears … just give the guy a chance.

So he gets into the shuttle and takes off. As he nears the Asteroid Belt, his pocket communicator ding-a-lings. It’s an incoming text message. (Don’t get ahead of me, now.)

The young alien guy takes the elbow-earphones off and turns his attention to his pocket communicator so he can read the message. It’s from his girlfriend (or whatever it is they call the female of the species). She’s sending him some pictures of herself in intriguing poses, which totally captures his attention.

Suddenly, there’s a huge jolt as he bounces off an asteroid, and the Garbage Disposal Shuttle careens out of control, heading straight for this planet that’s looming larger and larger before him. He panics and ejects in his Garbage Disposal Shuttle Escape Pod, leaving the shuttle to its ultimate fate as he zoots on back to the mother ship.

Meanwhile, the shuttle itself enters the Earth’s gravitational field and crashes on land – land that is nothing but cooled, black lava. The garbage of course, spills out and covers the lava.

Now, inside the garbage are some microscopic, wormy, creepy-crawly things that continue to munch away on the detritus of the alien space travelers. They multiply, leaving their own waste behind, waste that creates the first patch of soil on the barren lava-encrusted planet. From that patch eventually emerges more thingies, which make more soil, which encourages more creepies.

And so forth and so on. Creepies become bigger creepies, which grow fins, or legs, or wings, or a combination of all these things. They evolve, grow larger, and next thing you know … billions of years later, we have mankind.

Someday, humans are going to travel to distant worlds, creating our own garbage along the way, and disposing of it responsibly, by shooting it into a star. But who knows? We might send a novice pilot out in our own Garbage Disposal Shuttle, someone who might become distracted by a text message and who might accidentally dump our garbage on a lifeless planet.

It’s a lesson written in the stars: “Don’t text while driving!”