“You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out…”
So reads the beginning of a tongue in cheek description of the laws of cricket. If you understand cricket it makes perfect sense. If you have no idea it will only confuse you further.
We can look at anything in life from a different angle and make it preposterous. Years ago the comedian Dave Allen recounted the tale of teaching his son to tell the time. “You have three hands, the first hand is the hour hand, the second hand is the minute hand, and the this hand is the second hand…” He went on. “The numbers, let’s look at the numbers, 1 is 5, 2 is 10, … six is a half…” Like the rules of cricket, this makes complete sense if you already know what is going on.
I’ve been wondering how to look at life from silly angles. Sometimes we don’t even need to make up the peculiarities, they exist all by themselves. Our attachment to tradition is a ripe source of material.
The British drive on the left because people tend to be right handed, this makes it easier for a person to wear their sword. Of course!
It has always been curious to me how the US operate with a date format of month / day / year, also saying the month first when speaking. And yet for arguably the most important day the year we know it as “the 4th of July,” and not “July 4th.”
Science and the natural world have their beautiful absurdities. Just think of the duck-billed platypus.
Liquids are more dense than gases, and solids are more dense than liquids. Most solids will sink in a container filled with their own liquid because we all understand Archimedes’ Principle, which states that when a body is immersed in water the phone rings. [Thank you, Spike Milligan.] Ice is the solid form of water and yet ice floats on water. We accept it because we see it, and most of us don’t even question it. Ice is about 9% less dense than the water around it, because of hydrogen bonds. Like, duh! [I can just picture myself explaining this to someone saying, “well, it’s yer ‘ydrogen bonds, mate!” and expecting to see total clarity in their eyes .] My point here is that water is preposterous. Just think about what it’s made from.
The chemical formula for water is H20. That is two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. Hydrogen is explosive! Remember the Hindenburg. If you have no oxygen the a fire can’t burn. When you breathe on a fire to get it going you’re feeding it oxygen. However, if you put together two atoms of something explosive with one atom of something that helps stuff burn, you get something that can put out fire.
Wherever you look the world is silly. Take language. The word ‘cleave’ has two meanings, which have opposing definitions: we can cleave something in two, i.e. split it, or we can cleave something to our chest, i.e. make it one with us.
We can take silliness and build on it. Victor Borg was a great observer and noted how numbers appear within words in the English language. He wondered what would it be like if you added the number ‘one’ every time this happened, and in so doing he created an inflationary language: ‘wonderful’ becomes ‘two-derful;’ ‘be-fore’ becomes ‘be-five;’ ‘cre-ate’ becomes ‘cre-nine.’ He went on to tell his story. “Twice upon a time there lived in sunny Califivenia a young man named Bob. he was a third lieuelevenant in the U.S. Air Fiveces…”
The world is preposterous. All we need is a little curiosity, and to occasionally challenge some of the things we have taken for granted, and consider them from a different angle. Once we get comfortable with how ridiculous things can be, and one we stop taking life and ourselves too seriously, we can really have some fun, like Victor Borg.
