Quite by accident this week, I learned that my childhood Saturday mornings, sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, were a lie. Coyotes, it turns out, are faster than roadrunners.
Roadrunners can hit top speeds of just 20 mph, while coyotes can run as fast as 43 mph. All of which means, contrary to what I was told most of my childhood, is that in a footrace, the Road Runner quickly would have been dinner for Wile E. Coyote.
It’s hardly the only thing I was told as a child that turned out not to be true. Parents are notorious for telling children things in order to get them to behave.
“Stop that. Do you want your face to freeze like that?” my mother would say whenever I would make funny faces.
I’m certain that’s not true. I’ve seen some unattractive people in my day, but I don’t think they that got that way because their faces froze. It’s probably hereditary.
“Don’t run with scissors” was another favorite thing my mother said. “You might poke out an eye.”
That always sounded like logical advice. But I’m here to tell you that in all the years I’ve been a reporter and an editor, I’ve never once seen a news story about a child putting out their eye from running with scissors.
“A 6-year-old boy’s eye was poked out today after he failed to listen to his mother’s advice not to run with scissors.
“’I bet I’ve told him a thousand times not to run with scissors in his hands,” the mother said. “Maybe now he'll listen when I tell him something.”
But this roadrunner/coyote thing bothers me. I always felt kind of sorry for Wile E. Coyote. All he wants is a tasty Road Runner to eat.
“But if he’s so hungry,” a friend suggests, “why doesn’t he just go buy some food instead of spending his money on all that crap from the Acme Corp.?”
In the Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. Coyote always shops at Acme, a mail-order company that seems to specialize in outrageous products like explosive tennis balls and invisible paint.
Unfortunately, the products never seem to work as advertised.
The dehydrated boulders, when rehydrated, become so large they crush Wile E. The jet-powered roller skates move him so fast that he can’t control himself and he goes flying off a cliff, usually hanging in midway momentarily until he realizes that, yes, gravity is still the law. The earthquake pills fail because he missed the fine print that says the pills aren’t effective on Road Runners.
Of course, there are other things in those cartoons that defied logic. Like where did Wile E. Coyote get the money to buy all those Acme products?
Not to mention the fact that Wile E. would often go flying off cliffs without so much as a scratch. Sure, sometimes, he’d squash himself into an accordion for a minute. But then he was always fine.
Same thing happened when a boulder fell on him. Or when he ran headlong into a rock wall that he had painted to look like a tunnel opening.
Wile E. didn’t talk very often. But when he did, he introduced himself as “Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.”
Well, he ain’t much of a super genius if he doesn’t realize that he, in fact, is faster than the Road Runner he’s chasing.
I may not be able to look ol’ Wile E. in the face ever again.
