I had anything but snails on my mind that night. Laundry was what was occupying most of my motor skills. Laundry and Algebra. I had a test the next day and between dodging raindrops and jumping puddles on the way to the laundry room, I had to battle polynomials and inequalities in my apartment. It's a sad state of affairs when laundry becomes the most appealing part of one's night.

I opened my front door in a mental state of algebraic contemplation. My keys were in my mouth and a laundry basket was in my hands. Halfway down the sidewalk that led to the laundry room, I stepped barefoot onto a snail that was trekking its way across the walk. This is one of the most unnerving phenomenons I have ever endured. To step on a snail even with a big black boot gives me an icky feeling, but to place a bare foot down upon one and feel his little guts squish up between my toes is worthy of a full body convulsion. It completely yanked my mind away from my Algebra and laundry and made me concentrate my entire human energy on the smooshed snail beneath my feet.

After regaining my composure I proceeded to the laundry room, dropped off my stuff and made my way back up the walk. As I got up to the remnants of the snail, I bent down to fully inspect the damage. He was most probably dead. I put my foot down right on the top of the shell he had spent most of his life trying to build and it crumpled like a cup under my seemingly 1000 ton weight. I don’t know what it is that drives these snails out of the safe confines of the bushes and shrubs they call home and out onto the sidewalk every time it rains. All I know is that each time I step on one it hits me right down in the core of my being. It's much like hitting an animal with a car, but a lot more personal. It's not some rampaging machine barreling down the highway that has snuffed a life out of this world. It's a Nike, a Reebok or (in my case) a bare foot. My distress over the fact that I just killed this disillusioned snail was not helped by the fact that, for the snail, the feeling of being stepped on was ten thousand times worse than the feeling I felt stepping on him. No sooner had I thought this than I immediately began to look at the situation in a critical manner.

I have the annoying habit of seeing all sides of most issues. It is not an enviable state of reasoning. I find it hard to get too excited about very many political issues because I see what one side wants and needs and I see the same thing with the other side also. I suppose that I should just find a side I believe in more and go with that issue. The only problem with that thought pattern would be, how could I possibly argue a case in which I knowingly can agree with the other side?

This dual philosophy thought pattern is what entered my head when I stared at the remains of the snail felled by my foot. Was it really more painful for the snail to be smooshed than it was for me to smoosh him? Logic would dictate that the snail is the one who received the short end of the stick in this scenario. But consider this, the mental capacity of a snail cannot nearly compare to that of a human. A snail can slither around and look for food. A snail can find a mate and procreate. A snail can sense stimuli and react to it. Beyond that, a snail can't do much else. A human however, can do a great many things. A human can create a system of interconnected metal wires that will unite people from one corner of the world to another. A human can place a man in a capsule and send him off into space in an aquarium like device, place that man on a floating rock and return him to earth. A human can form theories to explain their different feelings. A human can love someone so much that it hurts. A human can choose to like this breakfast cereal and dislike that one. A human can tell a bad joke. A human can hate. A human can make an A on a report in English class. All these things humans can do and snails can't. A human's brain is a complicated mass of nerve fibers and synapses that everyday make millions more transfers of information that all the phone lines in the world. A snail's brain can't possibly compare to that. The question I asked myself as I sat staring at that snails slimy remnants that laundry day was this: In a scale of mental capacity, did the feeling that snail's tiny brain felt while being crushed outweigh the distress my human brain felt when I crushed him?

To the snail, it was a half a second of excruciating pain. To me, it was three seconds of complete repulsion followed by three minutes of deep concentration and three weeks of occasional contemplation. Think of how many snails could benefit from this reasoning ability! Think of how many snails could live their mundane lives with the harnessed mental energy generated by three minutes of human meditation!

I rose from where I was stooping and noticed another snail slithering his way across the walk. I picked him up and stared into his face. Such a strange creature he was. Four eyes. I can't think of another creature that has four eyes. Arachnids have eight. Insects have six. Birds and mammals have two. But snails are the only ones with four that I know of. Other animals like crabs have shells but the similarities to snails end there. I tried to place the snail in some category but the closest I came was that they were in some way related to a mollusk, like a scallop or an oyster. I looked into this snail's eye and decided two things. One being that after a rain, I would keep a sharp eye on the ground so that I would hopefully never have to encounter this debate again. The other being that while my eye was on the ground, if I saw any snails headed toward a similar fate as the one I encountered today, I would toss them back into the grass. Whatever it is that drives them out of the damp grass couldn't possibly be as bad as what may await them up on the sidewalk.

In the end I decided once again that I couldn't commit to either side of the issue. I can certainly see how being crushed by the pedal of some giant creature would be extremely painful. Yet I can also see how it would make a giant creature feel to step on a smaller one. The question is within the capacity of the two creatures. One is a magnificent human being that thus far rules the planet. The other is an equally magnificent creature, which has lived for thousands of years with only a tiny brain to guide it through the world. I hate to end an essay like this but, there is no final decision.

The snail and myself would have rather avoided the argument completely.