Ways Your Body Ruins Everything

Your body is pretty good at some stuff, such as developing from a baby into an adult, moving around on two legs, and converting a taco into life-sustaining energy. Unfortunately, it's also pretty stupid, in that it doesn't understand exactly what you want it to do half the time, and instead just does some dumb thing that ruins everything.

There are usually some perfectly science-y reasons for this, but those reasons don't make everything less ruined. Here they are, anyway.

1.) Sweating
Science Says: This is your body's attempt to regulate its internal temperature. Unfortunately, that temperature is raised by social pressure, which is itself increased by your being a huge soggy disaster. Thanks for not figuring this out over the past thousands of years, body!

Result: "It's kinda hot! Don't worry, I'll handle this one, guys!" exclaims your dumb body, and then turns every social situation into a quagmire of embarrassment and perspiration. People dub you Sweaty McHandshake or Captain Sweatsalot or That Girl Who Stinks. Thanks to your body's attempts to ensure that you remain alive, you no longer want to remain alive.

2.) Yawning
Science Says: Science shrugs and is not sure. The old theory was that we yawn because we need more oxygen, which sounded pretty plausible,  so obviously that turned out to be the one thing that yawning definitely does not do. So nobody really knows. Well, your body does, but it's too busy failing to navigate staircases to let us know.

Result: Due to Brain Mysteries, you wind up communicating in the clearest possible terms that you simply don't care about whomever you're talking to. Now feeling slighted and also a little sleepy, your conversational partner yawns too, and the sentiment is returned. Unless she is a baby. In which case you should probably stop conversing with babies.

3.) Anxiety
Science Says: Anxiety is tied to the fight-or-flight mechanism your body developed to make sure you weren't just sitting around twiddling your thumbs while being attacked by prehistoric monsters. If our biology told us to just be chill all the time, we'd have responded to saber-toothed tigers with a "Who's a pretty kitty?" and perhaps a ball of cave yarn, whereupon we would get eaten.

Result: Your body (helpfully!) responds to a threat by speeding up your reflexes, releasing endorphins, and accelerating your heart rate. This would be great if the threat were a charging rhino, or a bear on a skateboard, but unfortunately your body is unable to tell the difference between these things and going on a date. It responds to "Oh no, a shark!" the same way it responds to "Oh no, a girl!" In the end, your hyperactive reflexes usually don't assist you in diving out of the path of a vengeful octopus. They merely cause you to suddenly be terrible at basic physical tasks, and then to accidentally pour a glass of water on your pants.

4.) Hiccups
Science Says: Rapid contractions of the diaphragm caused by any number of things, including eating too fast, drinking something carbonated, or absolutely nothing.

Result: You look more foolish than a guy in a jester's outfit at the annual Foolery Convention. No social task is possible for the duration of the hiccups.

If you could eliminate one of these things forever, which would it be, and why?

Related Post: How To Get Rid of the Hiccups