“Safety first,” preached my Girl Scout leader. More than once. Zoned out from her warnings, my thought was, “For heaven’s sakes, safety probably is important, but let’s just get on with the adventure! We’re going to the woods; we’re going to fish, we’re going to do things with knives; we’re going to build fires!” All that she was doing was postponing those thrills with her boring, pedantic “always cut away from yourself” warnings.
Runaway Toyotas and other news stories have brought these ancient “safety first” thoughts back to the forefront of my memory bank. Where do we draw the line between being safe and being so smothered with “safety first” that we fail to experience any joy from life?
Remember when you were a kid and you coasted down a hill on your bike with the big, fat tires and you heard the wind whistle past your ears and felt it cool your sweaty little body? It was exciting; it felt good, and all these years later, you still remember that thrill, don’t you? Do you think that you would have that same memory if you had been helmeted and swathed in elbow and kneepads? Where is that line between safety and joy-kill?
You look around you at children— maybe some of them in your family who you love more than your life—and you want them protected, but wouldn’t it be nice for them if they could have some spontaneous fun, that same coasting-down-the-hill thrill? The time spent slathering on sunscreen and suiting-up for bike-riding may take longer than their 10-second-attention-spans will spend on the actual ride. Did “safety first” kill the thrill?
Anna Quindlen’s latest novel, Every Last One, deals with the issues of keeping our children safe and, to use her phrase, “the randomness of tragedy.” Life has no guarantees and no matter how much we prepare, we cannot control everything. It’s a tricky call: that place between care and careless.
Before Augusten Burroughs overlaid it with neurosis, “running with scissors” had an appealing edge about it. Sure, it might not have been the safest thing—safer though if you ran with the pointy-ends away from you—but it was forbidden, and thrilling and joyful. I revel in it still by occasionally wearing my sweatshirt with the imprinted “Runs With Scissors” slogan. That freedom which arises from casting aside “safety first,” even for just a moment, causes laughter.
That same spirit of weighing the odds and deciding to take the risk—thousands are not dying daily from running-with-scissors injuries; hundreds are not even “putting their eyes out”—allows me to continue to drive a Toyota. The risk, or the perceived risk, seems to be miniscule; the odds appear hugely in my favor. Just get in, put on the seatbelt and enjoy the ride: maybe with a tiny, previously unfelt, thrill at this new possibility. How will I react if my Toyota decides to become a “runaway?” Will my skill-level be worthy of its mettle? Exciting thoughts. My one small nod to the hue-and-cry has been to consider a front bumper sticker cautioning others, “Get out of the way! This car is out of control!”
Can we rationally expect life to contain no risks? Life where, from the moment we begin breathing the pollen-laden air, we encounter risk. Risk seems inherent with life. I know a man who makes his living doing “risk management” for companies. Sensible enough: manage or minimize risk; don’t eliminate it. Minimize it too much and we may not have lives. In Cowboy in the Jungle, Jimmy Buffett sings, “I don’t want to swim in a roped off sea.” In a more free-spirited phase of this nation, folks said, “Only when great risks are taken, are great gains made.”
Now, maybe I didn’t stick a fishing hook into myself, cut off my digits or torch myself in the campfire because I subconsciously absorbed the “safety first” lecture of my mother, the aforementioned leader of my Girl Scout troop, or maybe the odds were just in my favor. Maybe/probably, the odds mostly are in of our favor everyday and we’re just trying to over-control. Let go. Just for the thrill of it, sometimes take a little risk; a great gain could result.