Inventing My Own Law, or The Hubris of Original Thought
I only get twenty-five minutes for lunch. This means I’m often microwaving leftovers from The Oven or a Lean Cuisine in the department office. While these frozen dishes are actually pretty tasty, some require the diner to stop the microwave process after a few minutes, peel the plastic wrap, stir the contents, and resume cooking for a few more minutes. Now, I am not a lazy person, but one day, while I was waiting for the microwave to count down, my mind began to wonder if there were people who specifically choose their microwaveable meals by whether they have to interrupt the cooking process to stir their industrially-produced meal. Immediately, several words came to mind: “Of course there are; there must be...” I could picture some lazy shopper holding two equally-priced frozen dinners in their hands, and purchasing one over the other based not on flavor, but on there being one less step to what is already a simple and convenient process. Over the years, I’ve had multiple moments like these, where I wonder if someone has ever done something extreme, outrageous, or ridiculous, and then determined that if I could imagine it happening, it is more than likely the case that it HAS happened. With seven billion people on the planet right now, the odds are that it’s already happened.  I decided to give this occasional moment a name: Segrist’s Law. Essentially, the law is this: If you find yourself wondering if a person has ever done something in a peculiar way or for bizarre reasons, then it has already happened somewhere in this strange world.  For example, right now I’m wondering if an artist has painted a series of a transvestite Han Solo portraits where that lovable smuggler is wearing Princess Leia’s clothing. I haven’t consulted my Google, but something makes me think the answer is yes. A shorter, adage-sized version might be: If you wonder whether someone has ever done it, someone has done it. In a somewhat meta-fear vein, I was initially reluctant to post this idea online, because I have a sneaky suspicion that someone else has already come up with this idea, and I’ll be made aware of it in the comments section. If that comes to pass, this one post will--laughably and ironically--be an exemplification of Segrist’s Law, or whatever name The People of the Internet call it. But if I’m wrong about that situation, and I really am the first person to come up with this idea, what kind of paradox have I painted myself into?
