Sylvia the Evolutionist

Sylvia was an evolutionist. She was not an evolutionist by profession; she was an evolutionist by nature. (By profession, she was a flight attendant on a rather run-down airplane flying people back and forth from Los Angeles to Tahiti for $450.) Charles Darwin was not so much a subject of awkward conversation for Sylvia but rather a godlike figure whose message was her life's duty to spread.

"The Tree of Life is a tree of many branches," Sylvia said with an obscurely monotone voice to a bewildered passenger, a businessman who hailed from Bangkok. His mouth hanged open, and he was frozen except to blink. He couldn't quit staring at Sylvia's amazingly over-painted eyes. There was so much plastered-on mascara that her eyelashes must have weighed a ton. "The bacterium and the amoebae lie at the bottom and from there come the algae, fungi, and then the eukaryi." She somberly slid her knobby-knuckled hands into her apron pocket and grabbed a mysterious object locked in her fist. She opened it to reveal something surprisingly passive. "Would you care for a cracker?"

Even though Sylvia was a flight attendant with a life mission, (indeed one of the very few flight attendants who dare possess a life mission) her life so far had not exactly been the path of righteousness and glory.

She had only gained a true glimpse of her purpose ten years ago in high school--her sophomore year when she won a creationism/evolutionism debate. (Her opponent's counter-arguments consisted basically of "If you like evolution so much, then why don't you marry it?") Nevertheless, the moment when her befuddled debate instructor announced Sylvia's victory, was when she knew she would spend the rest of her life being an evolutionist and fulfill the important role in society to counter argue anyone who dared question the noble works of Sir Charles Darwin.

Unfortunately and frustratingly for her, she since discovered most people she ran across either supported the idea of evolution or would rather not talk about it. This irritated her to no end and frequently caused screaming fits during her flights (and loosely throwing around the term 'creationist bastard'). Even worse, it indirectly inspired her to over-burden her eyelashes. She did seem to have an awfully difficult time keeping them open.