Opinion: Eye rolling comes naturally; swimming doesn't

Human beings aren’t born with the ability to swim, they must learn to do it. Who was the first swimming teacher?

A lot of early men and women probably fell in the water and drowned before someone – let’s call him Ogg – fell in and by dumb luck flailed arms and legs in such a way that he didn’t drown. When asked why he didn’t drown, Ogg proudly boasted, “Ogg teach you how.’’

Thanks to Ogg, competitive swimming is now an Olympic event.

It may be that Ogg made a second amazing discovery: Coming out of the water, he may have realized that both he and his loincloth smelled better. Bathtubs and washing machines followed, as well as better smelling caves.

About parachutes, the mere thought of jumping out of an airplane isn’t rational. The very first parachute jump would be pretty scary. It’s possible that, like Ogg’s swimming experience, it was an accident. Could the pioneer jumper have fallen from an airplane while holding on to some large piece of cloth that broke the fall? For the life of me, I can’t imagine the first jump being done on purpose. What do you think?

Another quandary: Where did music come from? Was it invented, written, discovered, instinctive or what? It can be written in a language that can be taught, understood and performed. A time had to exist when there was no music.

It may be that the mythical Ogg strikes again. Consider this scenario: Ogg and other hunters and gatherers are out and about. It is raining, and the raindrops make a variety of tinkling sounds as they fall. Ogg is at work making a spear by pounding a rock with another stone. Ogg’s cousin, Ugg, is working on some dried vines that will be used like we use ropes. He discovers he can make plunking sounds with his fingers on the vines.

Uncle Gog, in an effort to clear dirt away from a seashell, makes a tooting sound as he blows into it. The blend of sounds causes them to nod their heads in unison. Thus, the earliest variation of a jazz quartet – piano, bass, drum and trumpet.

Sheet music, Mozart and Louis Armstrong came later.

While in a questioning posture, I wonder about the origin of what appears to be a congenital trait among teenagers.

Do they learn it or are they born with the trait? I call it the “show ‘em the whites of your eyes’’ phenomenon.

I believe it’s inborn because it comes so naturally to teenagers. An adult will say something that sounds perfectly sensible to another adult. Not so to the adolescent, who rolls his eyes in such a way as to leave no doubt about how absurd the statement and the adult are.

If you have been around teens, you know the contortions in the face and the body language are so standard among virtually all teenagers that it must be instinctive.

The body goes stiff and the head goes back slightly. The face converts into a major league frown; the mouth pops open and a sigh is heard. The forehead wrinkles and the head moves in an arc as the eyes roll until mostly the whites are showing.

Once the silent critique has concluded, the face returns to the frown mode. If the adult doesn’t relent, encore eye rolling may follow. Too many teens perform this act in exactly the same way for it to be taught; it must be inherited.

When I was a teenager, nobody taught me, yet I was to eye rolling what Michael Jordan is to basketball. Like most other teens, it left me when I grew up.

If we are all born with the eye-rolling gene, we can’t blame it on Ogg. It probably began in the Garden of Eden, where Cain became the first teenager to roll his eyes in disgust when Adam and Eve warned him to stop picking on his brother.

That works for me.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

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