A Sad Excuse for a Family Tree

Each Sunday a different minister comes to our Old Folks' Home to conduct a little service. We've had 'em all -- Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews, Rastafarians, Buddhists, Ba'hai, Holy Rollers, Latter Day Saints, Hare Krishnas. Once we had the Dalai Lama, and the next week Joseph Smith dropped in. When Pope Paul gets well, he'll no doubt schedule us in. Talk about your ecumenical.

Today we had us one of those world champion proselytizers, a Creationist Evangelista, name of Hobart Sternclamp. This was perfect for one of our residents, Ben Idoubtit. Ben wanted to talk about the Bible, the King Jimmy Version. He said he had some questions and observations about some parts of the Bible that come shortly after "In the beginning..":

Hobart: "Let us pray."
Ben: "You think prayer is going to do us any good? It's almost certain that all the people here are crazy."
Hobart: "Why do you say that?"
Ben: "Well, according to you the population started to thicken up when Adam and Eve had those boys. But then Cain offed Abel, and that left just three people to populate the world. Only way it could been done is there was some incest along the way, and that just leads to birthing a bunch of retards. Pretty damn lean start to a family tree, you ask me."

Hobart, musing: "I can see your point. But it was all taken care of when God started over with the Noah and the Ark gig. You know, all the people but Noah's family sucked gas."
Ben: "Yes, but that's just what I'm talking about. See, we know Noah incested; just about had to if we was going to have any knee-biters around to populate the planet. And we know Noah was whacko from all the previous incest. That's why he loaded up his boat with crap like mosquitoes, black widow spiders and cobras."

Ben: "Did you know, Rev, what it says in the encyclopeedee about this? It says, '...the non-viable offspring that result from incest...gets worse with each generation.' So I feel sorry for you."
Hobart: "You feel sorry for me?"
Ben: "You're one generation younger than me. I'm whacky, sure, but you're going to turn into a real lugnut."

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When I was in high school I participated in track and field. My event was called, then, the "broad jump." (No, I don't know why; just go with it.) Sometime in about the 1950s it was changed to "long jump," which I grant is more descriptive.

Didn't matter. Wilt Chamberlain and Kobe Bryant and I just kept jumping broads.