THE SHOO FLY

Do you want to know why flies are so dumb? Because, really, they are. They fly in your house from an open window, then they spend hours and hours walking up and down the same window unable to figure out how to get back out. I mean, why did they even bother to come in if that was all they planned to do? They're fascinated with walking up and down glass, seeing what the outside world looks like. They don't want to explore indoors, oh no. They just want to walk up that pane of glass getting a prisoner's eye view of the outside world.

I think it's mostly down to the name. When they were naming all the critters they got to the fly and they had two big attributes to choose from. It was either "fly" (a lot) or "walk" (now and then). Until you really got those microscopes invented there wasn't much chance of calling it "gross eater" but I can accept that as a name too ("Hi, I'm a fly - I'll just be vomiting on my food before I eat it...").

So they went with fly as the name of the thing and man figured he'd done a pretty good job there. It seemed descriptive, it got to the essence of the insect. Dictionary Guy gave it the seal of approval, "fly" it was.

But it's a fait accompli. The fly must fly. Otherwise it doesn't really have much purpose. If it doesn’t fly, it doesn't have a whole lot else to do with its day.

Now, just imagine if ancient man had called that little bug "the smart". Suddenly, no more bumping into the window pane, angrily buzzing his way up and down the glass. Now the fly's doing Boolean algebra and working out the flaws in Einstein's theory of relativity.

Of course, if flies were smart they'd actually invent machines to do the flying for them. You'd be wondering what that buzzing was in your bedroom in the middle of the night - switch the light on and it's a "smart" in a miniature bi-plane. Yeah, he's saving his wings.