Please Add The Darwin Awards to the List of Required High School Reading

During the summer of June, 2008, a teenager in South Carolina was decapitated after climbing two fences blocking a restricted area and colliding with an operating roller coaster. While I am am not one to ridicule the tragedy of a situation or mean any disrespect for the deceased, it is my humble opinion that this guy was an idiot. When an area is restricted, it's usually for a good reason. There could be hazardous materials stored in the area. There could be wild animals stored in the area. Or in this case, the restricted area is in the path of a really fast and really powerful roller coaster capable of decapitating anyone who doesn't heed the signs of "Restricted Area."

What really stuck in my still-attached head was that I distinctly remember a very similar incident at my local amusement park Great America about 10 years ago. In 1998, a man leaped over a pair of fences blocking a restricted area and wound up colliding with an operating roller coaster. The similarity of both events, including the hopping of two fences, is eerie. I remember this incident because it is rumored that my high school classmate was the park employee who launched the ride that headed straight into the headstrong man who climbed those fences to recover his lost hat (oh, the irony).

It just so happens that the 1998 Great America roller coaster decapitation incident is an entry of the Darwin Awards website. For those unaware of them, the Darwin Awards is a database of all the foolish actions of a person or of a group of people that resulted in his/her/their removal of the gene pool. The theory is that by eliminating the mentally deficient who would cause their own deaths in a stupid matter, the genetically smarter would continue the species. As the Darwin Awards website states:

"The Darin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it."

Then last week I found a book in the bargain bin of a local bookstore: The Darwin Awards. This book, part of a omnibus, contains most of the Darwin Award entries of the website in the convenient package of a paperback book. Since one of my favorite pastimes while working in front of a computer screen is getting away from the computer screen and reading a book. One of the entries in the book happens to be the Great America roller coaster incident. With the South Carolina incident combined with me reading the Great America incident in The Darwin Awards book, an idea popped into my head: Let's make The Darwin Awards required high school reading.

Every book in high school is supposed to teach students a lesson. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn teaches about the absurdity of racism. The Catcher in the Rye discusses alienation in our youth.And A Separate Peace taught that if you market well enough, almost any book can become required high school reading despite being a dull, pointless read. The Darwin Awards would offer more practical lessons of how not to get killed in a stupid way. Had that teenager in South Carolina read the entry about the man losing his head at a roller coaster ride in Great America, chances are he would not have done the same thing at Six Flags and would be alive today.

The youth are our future. If we can arm at least one young person with the knowledge of avoiding stupid ways to die, the world has a better chance. And if a young person finishes reading The Darwin Awards and still manages to die in a stupid way, we'll have a sign that we our future is slowly spiraling to its doom.