Let me get this straight, Icarus — we’re to believe that you were smart enough to design a way to fly of your own volition, but stupid enough to fly “too close” to the sun?
Uh-uh. I’m not buying that story. Something else went down. A mistake so foolish and easily avoided that you decided to blame the sun.
Do you know how far away the sun is, Icarus? Well, I don’t either, but I do know it’s far enough that you would die of old age long before its heat melted your fake wings. And that’s provided you’re wearing a space suit. If not, you would die of myriad other causes first, such as lack of oxygen, freezing temperatures, and all those other factors human bodies don’t like.
Hold up — you flew nude? Weren’t you concerned about your nether regions? You should have worn armor. Shorts and a t-shirt. A toga at the very least. You could have crashed into a tree and broken your ding-a-ling.
No risk mitigation was considered at all, clearly. If you had earned your Project Management Professional certification, you would have thought ahead and made accommodations to correct for anticipated risks.
Even if you’re not good at math or physics, and even if you don’t realize how very far away the sun is from Earth, all you needed to understand the risks posed to wax wings was to witness the world’s most ubiquitous fail when the scoop of ice cream falls off a small child’s sugar cone and lands in a mushy mess on the sidewalk.
Here’s what I believe really went down: you were flying up, up into the sky, when suddenly, you found yourself facing off against a dignity-stealing bee. The bee is rushing you, trying to sting your face, your bare torso, your easily accessible backside. You’re swatting at it like mad, trying to knock it off course. But this bee is determined. They always are.
“Off with you, you damn-ed bee!” you shout, but it refuses to comply.
Your flight path is suffering due to the erratic swatting. You’re dodging left and right, regretting that you left your clothes at home, because your ding-a-ling — as your lowest hanging body part — is now your Achilles heel. You’re realizing how terribly, terribly vulnerable you are. To a fuzzy little bee, no less!
You’re sweating profusely as you thrash back and forth. With the last swat, your wings are coming apart. You fall back to Earth, where your father comes to collect you.
“My son! My son!” Daedalus cries.
“The sun! It was the sun!” are your last words.
You can’t have “Brought down by a bee” carved on your tombstone. That’s just shameful. But if it was the all-powerful sun, a massive ball of plasma upwards of 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (or 5.778 Kelvin, in case you want a data point that you can’t possibly compare to anything else you know), you’ll die a hero.
“At least he tried!” is what the public will say.
Whereas if they knew about the bee…
“Well, that was just dumb,” they’d say, shaking their heads.
So, you leave everyone to suspect the sun. But they’re also left wondering why you didn’t wear clothes. Seeing someone’s nether regions, both straining and dangling at the same time, as they slowly lift over your head and into the sky just isn’t a good look for anyone.
A Flick of the Pen 