Dolphins are really smart. They travel together, play together, have great memories, and if the rumors are true, they have an actual language. I always think that a measure of an animal’s intelligence is its capacity for emotion–sadness, happiness, love, and the worst and funniest of all emotions, devastating embarrassment. Dolphins swim around saving us from sharks, making noises that sound suspiciously like giggles, and generally being super cute. People love them. Flipper did for dolphins what Jaws did for sharks, only backwards.
A hundred years ago, I sat down at my very first college class. It was Geoscience, or something like that. Picking a chair near the back, I plunked myself down next to a pretty girl named Lisa. I was nervous, because I was 20 or so, sitting in a new place beside a pretty girl. Sometimes when I sit in chairs, I loop my feet through the legs. The prof was doing a role call. When your name was called, you went up to the front, checked your name off, and she took a picture of your face to help her remember names. Because I was in the back of the class, I had to walk past everyone. When she called my name, I stood up, as people do when their names are called. I forgot to unhook my feet, tried to take a first step, and immediately flailed desperately towards a rapidly approaching floor. When I landed, the chair, still hooked on my feet, flipped up over me and landed on my back. It was so awful that no one laughed. Not a sound. Not a chuckle, a whisper, just dead pin-drop silence. Then, of course, I had to untangle myself from my chair and finish my walk to the front of the class. Although no one I hang around with now was there, I’m positive that everyone in that class still remembers it. If I ever run into any of them, I will never live it down.
This dolphin totally blew it. While him and his buddies were showing off for a bunch of people in Mexico, he got a little too excited, didn’t look where he was going, and landed in a boat. Luckily, the people on board managed to get it back in the water, but if dolphins really do have a language, great memories, and a keen sense of embarrassment, it’s going to be a long time before he lives this one down.
