Incoming

     As you will certainly recall from our last thrilling installment, this column has been using the power of the Interwebs to warn you of summer dangers which the self-styled guardians of our safety will not talk about.  Though you may search online as you please, no one but the postcard cartoonists have bothered to bring us the True Facts regarding the attraction of shellfish to women in bathing suits.  I hope you have added appropriate precautions to your plans for this summer.  (Even if that’s no more than ordering steak and lobster every time you run out to Arby’s for lunch.)

     There are other perils of summer living which I have hunted diligently amid those brochures sent out by national parks and public beaches.  I have seen dire predictions of what will happen if you decide to get out of your car and pet that baby bear, and assurances that if sharks are sighted offshore, you are in no danger if you take certain precautions (withdrawing to a safe vantage point: Boise, Idaho, for example.)  But I have found no description of what I sometimes refer to as the Meaty Meteor.

     For years, however, our postcard artists have responded to the call.  If no one else will warn the public about humans dropping out of the sky during your leisure moments, THEY are ready to make us aware of the problem at hand.  (Or whatever part of the vacationer is the target.  The phrase “problem at tummy” didn’t sound quite right.)

     I know, I know: people have mentioned it.  I’m glad somebody is worrying about these important topics, but I think the artists are on my side.  Referring to “Meaty Meteors” may seem to be a misnomer, as a “meteor” refers to an object flying through the air, often seen at night as it ignites on entering the Earth’s atmosphere.  Those meteors which actually make impact are correctly referred to as “meteorites”.  Therefore, these people inform me, I ought to speak of “Meaty Meteorites”, as impact is implied.

     But the postcard artists never actually show the impact.  Their soft identifiable flying objects are always just about to strike, giving viewers the opportunity to play a quick game of “What Happens Next Is” in the privacy of their own imaginations.  So I think I am safe in preferring the shorter name.

     As with the previous column’s warning about shellfish, this phenomenon is largely gender-specific.  (Lobsters pinch the women on the backside, but men on the toes.)  When the Meaty Meteor is female, they always seem about to land on a stomach, or, as seen in the preceding example, on the head of the unlucky male victim.

     A Male Meaty Meteor (or MMM, as those scientists in the know call them) seems to be a lot more focused.  (Note, by the way, that the experts we have consulted seem to have found no same-sex meteor impacts.  More research is surely needed.)  This leads me to wonder whether the masculine version of the Meaty Meteor is somehow a late form evolved from the common postcard crab, or Beach Pincher.  But I will leave that up to graduate students looking for a dissertation topic.  My job is to bring the message of the postcard artists to your attention.  Remember: that next plump plummet may have your name on it.