OK, One More Time: I Have GOT to Get a Hobby

I received one of those e-mail lists of "Fun Facts" today. Among them was this:

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.

I had to reply. I just had to. I would have been more likely to never breathe again than not reply. My work would have suffered. My home life would have fallen apart. You'd have seen me mumbling to myself beside a shopping cart downtown without the benefit of having a cell phone at my ear. There was simply no way to avoid it. Here's my response, verbatim:

I don't know why I do this, but....

That thing about a flea jumping 350 times its body length being equivalent to a human jumping the length of a football field just doesn't compute.

Assuming the average person is 5 1/2 feet tall, that's 1 5/6 or 1.8333 yards tall.

350 * 1.8333 yards is 641.666 yards.

A football field is 100 yards long.

So the assertion just doesn't match up. Jumping 350 times your body length would be the equivalent of jumping nearly 6 1/2 football fields.

So now I just don't believe any of it.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that this is why nobody wants to play with me. I'll leave it up to your imagination how the sender responded to this.

If the sender should read this, I apologize. Please don't stop sending me lists of fun facts. I promise never to over-analyze again. Really. Although if my head explodes, it'll be your fault.

Thank God people have stopped sending around "Stephen Wright" quotes that are full of lines by Oscar Wilde and Groucho Marx. I was really busy there for a while.