Risk, Vladimir Putin on a Cat, and Death by Playground

“I respect what you said, but remember that these men have lands and castles.  It’s much to risk.” – Braveheart

I would say I want a cat I can ride, I’d just settle for one that wears sunglasses and doesn’t buck me off after explosions.

When The Boy was tiny, he was afraid of slides.  Any slide.  Short ones.  Long ones.  Plastic ones.  Metal ones.  Forget tall ones.  I would stand at the bottom of the slide, waiting for him to slide down.  Often there was crying and yelling from behind a tear and snot-covered face.  And The Boy was even worse.  But there was no real reason for him to have any fear – I was there and the playground equipment met every Federal standard, even the regulations that made sure that the swings were safe for handicapable lesbian migratory waterfowl of size.

Playground equipment was more dangerous back before the dawn of recorded history, when I was in kindergarten.  At my school, our playground equipment included a merry-go-round that was missing part of the wooden deck (this is true).  The missing deck part was close to the center, and a kindergartener could stand in there, and could run and push the merry-go-round a LOT faster.  The downside was if any of us had fallen under the merry-go-round while pushing it up to speed?  At that point the merry-go-round would become a quite efficient kindergartner decapitation machine.  Thankfully, we had already gnawed all the lead and asbestos off of the handles so it was safer for the next batch of kids, and the headless zombies were already our mascot at good old Sleepy Hallow Elementary, so a decapitated kid would have been just displaying a very large degree of loyalty.

Don’t fault a kid for being true to his school.

Our school nurse was excellent at re-attaching spines.  Lots of practice.

We also played with, I kid you not, the dry ice they used for packing the food they shipped to the school.  The Lunch Ladies® tossed it on the ground behind the kitchen after they unpacked the peas that had DONE NO WRONG before they turned them into the most ghastly smelling split pea soup.  They had to stop making that soup after the United States© ratified the Geneva Convention™ against chemical weapons.

Anyway, we had dry ice.  Let me write that a bit more specifically:

WE WERE KINDERGARTNERS WITH LIMITED SUPERVISION IN POSSESSION OF DRY ICE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Naturally we competed to see who could hold the dry ice in our hands the longest.  Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide, and has a temperature of -109.3 F (which really is -78.5 C).  The unsurprising answer to “How long can a kindergartner hold dry ice in their hand?” is: “Not very long.”

We did much better holding it against each other’s arms, I liked to hold it until the skin of my classmates turned white.  To a kindergartner, the pain of other people doesn’t exist, their brain isn’t developed enough for empathy.  Or maybe I was just a sociopath.  I will admit that I enjoyed it when the other kindergartners made funny noises.

Okay, I’m probably a sociopath.

Oh, and I forgot about the high jump pits.  We’d crawl between the top foam block and the bottom foam block and then the other kids would jump on the blocks.  When you have a dozen kindergartners on a foam high jump pit, it pretty effectively blocks out the light in the second layer.  As well as the air.  The last time I crawled between them I recall waking up with stars in my eyes after the bell rang and all of the other kids had gone inside.  Who says near suffocation can’t be a fond memory?

Playground equipment had evolved to the point when The Boy was a young Wildling™ the only way to actually hurt yourself on the equipment would be to take a hot glue gun and affix razor blades to the slide, and my restraining order prevents me from being near hot glue, so that’s right out.  A good slide designed in the last 20 years will be scary, but yet cozier than a mother’s womb.  Word is that a Federal Commission is looking to redesign wombs to meet current safety standards, including encasing the fetus in breathable bubble wrap and removing the word “mother” from association with the word “womb” because it’s something-ist (I lost my scorecard) to assume that only women can have wombs.

But returning to the original thought – it was hard to get The Boy to take risks as a kid – I remember how he cried the first time I made him rappel out of a helicopter.  What a baby!  You’d think that it was child abuse making a three year old do that!

Isn’t fear the way to overcome fear?

I kid.  But The Boy really did plug a speaker directly into a power outlet.  That made a hell of a noise and tossed out some sparks.  And was far more dangerous than the plastic four-foot high slide at the park.  This led me to an observation about The Boy.  What he thought was safe, was risky.  What he thought was risky, was safe.

And it’s not just kids that judge risk poorly, adults can suck at it, too.  Pop Wilder got more afraid of ordinary things as he got older – for example, he became unwilling to even attempt to adjust anything electronic – so he left his lights on continually.  Again, I kid.  But if it was more complicated than an on/off switch?  Nope.  Not his thing.

He also cut off many life choices due to this fear.  When everyone with three HTML programmers and a business plan was scheduling Hall and Oates® to do a business kick-off concert and was an instant Internet millionaire back in 1999, Pop was complaining about how much his medicine cost.  I got online (via a 56k modem) and found that his prescriptions could be had for about 10% of what he was paying.  Just by changing to GonnaGoBrokeSoonRX.com, we could save him about $1000 a month.

A month.

He wouldn’t do it.  “Well, it might get warm.  One of these medicines needs to stay cold, and only my pharmacy has the Wee Cuckold Striptease Elves© that keep it at the right temperature.”  So he paid $1000 a month more than he needed to.  I guess he owed something to the Elves.  Stupid Elves.

It’s natural to not want to risk it all.  Unless you’ve been drinking.

As I’ve observed you humans my fellow humans for the past few decades, I’ve discovered that Risk is poorly understood.  Pop Wilder had fallen victim to what I’m now calling Wilder’s Rule of Risk:  What he thought was safe, was risky.  What he thought was risky, was safe.  He ended up outliving his savings due to decisions that prioritized “safety” over even minimal risks.  He built barriers to action over unreasonable and unlikely fears.

Eyepatches.  I’ve always wanted one, or a glass eye that has a snow-globe inside.  Sadly?  Two good eyes.

I read the above passages to The Mrs. and she (rightly) noted that the risks I’ve taken in my life have been measured.  I’ve never taken all of my money and put it all on red.  The career choices I’ve made have been (generally) ones that led to more money and more security – they’ve been bets of winning versus winning more.  And when the stock market goes down?  I lose very little of my net worth.  Yay!  But if the stock market doubles, my wealth doesn’t double.  I’m giving up some of the upside in return for the safe.

But did I mention there were really good benefits?

But what am I missing?  I’ve won enough with the bets I’ve made that I’m playing life with house money now.  The question is, what if I’d dreamt bigger?  What if the subs you had delivered were Wilder Johns©?  Or Buffalo Wilder Wings™?  Yeah.  I do have a list of great ideas that I’ve had but never acted on.  Primarily because I’ve followed a path that led to me being pretty comfortable.  But is that always really safe?  Probably not, especially when you look at the big picture, and I recognize that.

Oddly, we often don’t realize on a day-to-day basis that some things in life aren’t risks, they’re certainties:

• You will Did that rip the Band-Aid© off?  Oh, wait, I forgot that you’re the immortal one.
• Taxes will go up.
• Freedoms will disappear. They might come back.  You might have something to do with that.
• Your money will be worth less. Hopefully not worthless in your life.  But in the long run?
• Systems you don’t expect to collapse, will. Like Medicare®, or Pringles©.  Imagine life without Pringlesâ„¢!
• If I described the year 2049 to you in detail, it won’t be like you think, unless you can imagine life without noses. Noses are so 2022.

So, we’re all going to die!  Let’s give up.

Never!  But understand other certainties that may or may not happen in your lifetime.  They’re certain, but their timing isn’t:

• The dollar will collapse.
• We will run out of economically viable/thermodynamically viable oil. We’ll never run out of oil, what’s left will just be too hard or too expensive in dollar or energy terms to harvest.
• Star Wars® movies might be good again.
• Global Warming© won’t doom humanity. Not even close.  It might flood New York, but probably not in my lifetime, if ever.  Darn it.
• An asteroid will hit George Clooney. A small one.  (Small asteroid, not a small George Clooney.)

Stein’s Law says:  If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.  Wilder’s Corollary:  But it might go on so long you can’t make a buck off of it failing.

Seriously, this may be from Risky Business®, but Tom’s still four foot three and nearly old enough for Social Security©.  Oh, and he drinks only vegan free range chicken juice.

Life is like Tom Cruise.  It’s short.  Life is also like having sex with a Kardashian.  Hairy and risky.  But you have a choice.  You can be afraid and live in fear.  You can also live gallantly, and die nobly.

We want to live with certainty.  We want to, especially when we’re young, and when we are old, avoid risk.  But we can’t.  The absence of risk is the absence of life.  The thrill of the first kiss, the thrill of winning when you’ve bet it all on red, those are life.  Life is struggle.  Life is fighting.  Life is also all about risk.

Step one of living gallantly and nobly?  Don’t be afraid of risks that aren’t real.

Step two?  Don’t spend too long in the high jump pit.