Just Stay In Bed 4 comments

I was raised in an environment where there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to safety. There were motorbikes, ATVs, assorted farm equipment, the dreaded “power take-off“, and so on … all open for use without a lot of attention paid to the fact that these things can kill you. Or hurt you badly.

I have had my moments of adrenalin, for sure, but I’m much more cautious now than I once was. I love riding motorcycles but feel a looming sense of caution now that wasn’t exactly present in my 20’s when I was actually doing a lot of riding. Recently, the Woman With Beautiful Arms (WWBA) went skydiving and I can say for sure that 20 years ago, you would have had to hold me back from signing up. Now … not so much. Maybe it is age, making me hold back a bit. A sense that time is finite and meant to be preserved.

Even at hockey, I find myself not pushing physically as much as I should, or could, for fear of injury. I’m also the one who, annoyingly, nags people about wearing their neck guards. I did get a stick across the throat last year, a freak occurance for sure, but I was sure glad I had my neck guard on. Some days, I fear that my sense of caution will over-ride my more natural stance as a risk-taker of sorts.

This morning, Yahoo News offered this news article about a freak accident that resulted in instant death for a woman in Alberta. A smart woman, clearly. It is impossible to judge her need for risk or adrenalin in her life. She was just sitting in her SUV in an underground parking lot, dropped something outside the open door of her SUV, reached to get it, and – through some unknown series of events – wound up pinned between her SUV and a concrete pillar.  Experts, so far, think she died instantly.

Here one minute, gone the next.

I think the scary part of this story, for me, is that I can see myself doing the Exact Same Thing. So easily.

Reading about this makes me want to stay in bed, quite honestly. It makes me want to shout louder and more insistently about neck guards, hand brakes, leaving your car in Park, wearing helmets, and just generally BEING CAREFUL. But … people are going to do what they do and my need to keep the people I care about safe is exactly that. My need. My “control” stuff, maybe. I will try to keep my mother hen persona down to a dull roar.

I am, however, going to be much more careful myself, given that I park my car in an underground garage right beside a concrete pillar.