What's it like to be the first? Og only knows

Ever wonder what it must be like to be the first to do something? Not like being first in line, but the first to ever do something.

I started thinking about that because of Pope Benedict’s retirement. He’s the first pope in about 600 years to leave the job while still breathing, which makes him the first to do so in modern times and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s like rebooting movie franchise. In this case, there will be a new pope while his predecessor still is among the living, the first time that’s happened since before Betty White was born.

Anyway, that got me started thinking about being the first person to do something, like the Wright brothers flying the first motor-driven airplane, or Neil Armstrong being the first man to set foot on the moon, or Danica Patrick being the first woman to start the Daytona 500 in the pole position.

For some things, it takes a lot of courage to be first. Or, sometimes, just persistence, or maybe even a lack of good sense. Sometimes the results are good, sometimes they may not be so good.

For example, take oysters. You have to admit, whoever first ate a raw oyster must have been awfully hungry. Think about it. There’s Og, one of our prehistoric ancestors, strolling along a beach with his loin cloth and club, minding his own business. He feels a hunger pang and decides to look for something to eat. Og spies a cool-looking rock in the water and things, “Ug, maybe Og can eat rock.”

So, he reaches into the briny water and retrieves one of the rocks and bites down on it. As Og spits out his broken teeth, he throws the rock to the ground, where it strikes another rock. Only this time, the “rock” cracks open. Og, who’s still really, really hungry, picks it back up, pries it open and discovers something soft and squishy inside. He decides it might be softer than the rock around it, and slurps down the slimy rock contents, because he doesn’t have the teeth left to chew it.

Now, that took courage, and a bit of hunger. You’ve seen oysters — slimy, mucus-looking things that initially you’d be more inclined to wrap in a tissue and dispose of rather than putting it in your mouth. But, because of hunger, Og was brave enough to try the oyster, and a new delicacy was discovered.

Coffee is something else that, if not courage, took a lot of persistence and patience. Back to Og, he’s seen birds and other animals eating berries all the time, and he comes across this one plant with a lot of pretty, green berries. Being hungry again — in Og’s time folks were hungry a lot — he thinks, “Me eat green berries.”

After spitting them out, Og thinks these berries are no good. A little later, our prehistoric friend notices the birds and animals wait until berries change color before eating them. With his primitive reasoning skills, Og decides to wait until the green berries change color.

They do, and Og gets a big mouthful of them again, ... and spits them out. But, somewhere in the back of that cro-magnon brain there’s a spark, and Og wonders, “What if Og boiled berries?” So, he picks a bunch and back at the cave dumps them in a clay pot with some water and puts it over the fire Unk had discovered. After a while he tries eating the boiled berries. They’re still not so good, but Og discovers the broth they’ve made isn’t half bad. And he turns up the clay pot and downs all the coffee bean broth.

Three days later, still buzzed and awake, Og has invented the wheel, plowed and planted the first field, drawn the first mini-series on the cave wall, built the first hut, shucked and slurped about a ton of slime rocks, and has contemplated the vastness of the universe.

Thanks to Og’s persistence at making the first coffee, we’re able to have frappacuppamochaespresso latte with 2 percent half and half.

Tobacco’s another thing you have to wonder about what possessed the first person to consume. Our friend Og once again was wandering around when he found this big, leafy plant. Something in his primitive mind said, “Chew it.” So, he did. It didn’t take long for Og to decide this wasn’t good to eat, especially after he turned green. But, he decided it was kind of fun to spit, and kept chewing the chaw.

Og showed the new leaves to Unk the firekeeper, but instead of chewing it he rolled up a leaf, put it in his mouth and set it on fire. After a coughing fit, Unk kept sucking on the burning leaf until he, too, turned green, but something about the fire leaf was irresistible. Unk later wadded up a bunch of leaves in a bowl with a spout, set them on fire and sucked the smoke through the spout.

Soon, Og and Unk were boiling those green beans and smoking those leaves, and got the idea that maybe others would want to do the same thing. So, they found a nice little cave, and invited others to stop by and, in return for three slime rocks, they could drink the coffee bean broth and suck the fire bowl. It wasn’t long before some of them were wearing black furs, grunting primitive poetry, drawing on the walls and making harmonious sounds with sticks and rocks. Thus was born the first coffee shop.