Sheep Unite!

My story begins…now!
I have often been convinced that human beings are nothing more than glorified sheep. Sure they can do simple arithmetic, reflect upon their own existence and, in isolated cases, communicate intelligently but somewhere in their A-Chromosomes they are still receiving messages – biological messages – that force them to revert back to some sort of prehistoric herd-like behaviour.

I was waiting at a station for a train that would take me to university. The train that was due to arrive was an express that would get me to uni in less than a half hour.
However, as is want to happen when State Rail is concerned, my train was delayed. When a train is severely delayed they sometimes cancel it and get it off the tracks. Being that my train was delayed by a substantial amount of time the next train that was to arrive at the station would to be a terminating one.
The conductors went from carriage to carriage making sure that everyone had gotten off. In the carriage right in front of where I happened to be sitting there was a passenger who either didn’t understand that he was supposed to alight from the train or simply refused to do so.
Now, because people lead such pathetic, miserable lives (myself included) they started to get curious (myself not included) about why the guy in the train wasn’t getting off.

Some kid standing near me, for no reason at all, made mention that they had probably found a syringe on the train.
This was clearly reason enough for the unwashed denizens at the station to stop staring blankly and chewing their cud and to start bleating amongst themselves about this mysterious syringe that had been found.
Somehow, bizarrely, the tale of the syringe was automatically attached to the guy who still happened to be in the train. More bleating.
A lady asked the guy sitting next to me what the delay was to which he replied that a syringe had been found and that a drug raid was probably taking place. More bleating.
I then heard some one mention that the trains probably wouldn’t be allowed to run until the sniffer dogs showed up and searched the train thoroughly for drugs. More bleating.

And so the train station was abuzz with people going on and on about drug raids and sniffer dogs. They wouldn't shut up until...

The tracks ahead cleared and the train was allowed to move on. A few minutes later another train showed up and we resumed our journey.

There were no drugs, no sniffer dogs and no syringe. It was all in the minds of about 50 people who should have known better given that they have the ability to think and to reason. And yet, here we are…

clambake, bakesale, swap meet, garage sale
clambake, bakesale, swap meet, garage sale
clambake, bakesale, swap meet, garage sale
clambake, bakesale, swap meet, garage sale

Published on Thursday, 6 March 2003