Accidental Genesis taken from The Accidental Optimist’s Guide to Life

“Life is what climbed out of the primordial soup.” My Dad.

“Evolution’s fine, if you’ve got plenty of time.” Colin Thompson, from Fish are So Stupid and Other Poems.

On the first day God was a little bored, sat alone in the void, with all his basic needs met, and he couldn’t even entertain himself musing on the meaning of life, because he knew the answer already, so he started experimenting and whoops! The Universe. “Oh!” said God, “Fascinating!”

On the second day, God said, let there be 92 elements and let them bump into each other and make ever more complex molecules.

On the third day (time is all relative, so let’s not get sniffy about a few billion years) he said, let there be the Sun, and let there be planets in its orbit. And God looked at all his stars and his planets and he was pleased.

On the fourth day he said, let there be water on that nice looking third planet, and let’s make soup! And so he stirred up a few amino acids and zapped it with a few million flashes of lightning and with a bit of luck, whoops, my word, on the fifth day there was a Blue-Green algae! 3,000 million years later, whoops, a fish! 70 million years later, plants! 40 million years later, an animal! 170 million years after that, a dinosaur! And God liked what he had created, and was pleased.

On the sixth day there was a bit of a disaster, but God is an optimist and optimists don’t give up, just because their masterpieces have been wiped out. So God thought He’d try something a bit different: something argumentative (just for fun) and capable of love (as really, he wasn’t getting much from those cockroaches and the dinosaurs, much as he missed them, were a bit, well, cold), so on the seventh day, 223 million years later, he created woman. And a few minutes later, man. (I’m sorry, forget spare ribs: genetically and embryologically, woman came first). But if there are any men reading this, do not despair. The great thing about being last is that it gives you longer to evolve.

Then 2 million years later, an hour before midnight on the seventh day, just before the end of the tax year, whoops, Mr. and Mrs. Joy, it’s a girl! Me! Honeymoon baby. A happy accident?