Science Says I Might Have Been a Stegosaurus Once

My first solid A in college came from a public speaking course I took fresh out of high school. I was preparing for a full-time LDS mission and had heard that missionaries were often asked to speak in church with little or no notice, so I wanted to be ready. But I quickly discovered that I naturally possessed my family's gift of gab anyway, thanks to a piece of my dad's advice that served me well throughout my school career:

If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with B.S.

Let me share an example:

One speech I gave that semester--a persuasive argument to spend more time in the mountains--required the use of three sensory aids. For reasons I can't recall, I didn't get around to writing the speech until the day I delivered it, and pushed to extremity, I had to select my sensory aids from items in my car.

So I presented my backpack as a useful piece of gear for mountain-going. Then I read from a book of wilderness poetry by Robert Service, which conveniently had a mountain on the cover. Finally, to drive my message home, I opened a new pine air freshener and passed it around the room for everyone to sniff.

The class got reeeally silly after that; to this day I wonder if I accidentally gave them drugs. But I got a good grade!

Image credit: Omaha Business Association

I had a ton of fun in that class, but my crowning achievement came with the final speech of the semester.

Based on other speeches I had heard, I figured I was one of the only students without kids. I was definitely the only one under twenty. So, with the help of my youthful innocence, my speech captured everyone's attention when I opened my PowerPoint file and the title appeared in large letters on the wall behind me:

Where do babies come from?

Writing and speaking are much the same: you've gotta hook your audience. With my title slide, I had them eating out of my hand. 

"I have pictures," I promised, and a few class members shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The tension paid off; when I clicked to the next slide, the whole room erupted in laughter.

"I drew that myself," I said. I was getting applause before I'd even really started.

And now, for your own benefit, dear reader, the basic message of that speech:

The Law of Conservation of Matter dictates that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. You can organize existing materials into a new formation, but you must have something first in order to create anything--even life. 

Take the human infant, for example. The womb is not a vacuum where a child magically appears. It is a construction site that constantly receives its building materials from the outside. And what are those building materials? Nutrients from what the human mother eats.

But food itself is not a factory for nutrients; the food got them from someplace else, too. Pretend the baby's mother eats an apple. Where did the apple come from? An apple tree. And like the human fetus, the young apple received nutrition from its host until it ripened and was picked.

 
But we're not quite there yet, still. The tree can't poof an apple into existence any more than the human mother can poof a baby. And in this case, the parent organism can't just eat an apple for nutrition. That would be cannibalism, which is gross. Instead, the tree sticks out its roots like crazy straws and sucks up everything it needs from underground.

Now we get to talk about rotting corpses. Whenever something dies--it could be anything, from plants to birds to Squidward's hopes and dreams--it usually ends up in the ground in order to contribute its sweet, sweet nutrients to the rest of us.

So let's say someone dies and gets buried underneath an apple tree. We'll call him . . . Dennis. As Dennis' body decays, everything gets broken down into tiny morsels of energy small enough for the tree to eat. Little helpers like worms and bacteria help spread Dennis out a bit so the other trees and plants can get their fair share, but our apple tree is satisfied. Along with water and sunlight, it has everything it needs to grow a juicy apple. And with that apple, the human mother builds a baby.

This is Dennis. Dennis has a terrible casket.

Dennis. Tree. Apple. Baby.

So believe in yourself! You are the recycled remains of someone great.

* * *

Why did you make me read this? you ask. Because my wife and I are celebrating the news that another baby will join our family this fall! And I should probably seek therapy, but I can't help but think just once of this experience from college whenever we're expecting. 

My apologies to you all.