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1. My son asked me, "Have you ever almost died doing something stupid?" I said, "Many times." "Doing what?" "How much time do you have? A dozen times at least." "Tell me one." "I wouldn& #39;t even know where to begin." "Just one."
2. "When I was camping in the 11th grade, my canoe got pulled upside-down as we were going over a waterfall. All our classmates were on the bank, looking on. I got pulled down into this whirlpool at the base of the falls. And my bathing trunks got pulled off."
3. "I would& #39;ve just swum up to the surface under almost any other circumstance, covered myself and walked to shore, but the last thing I saw as I went under was this beautiful, wonderful girl I was crazy about.."
4. "So I didn& #39;t want to come up out of the shipwreck with no pants on. That& #39;s the opposite of a heroic entrance. I thought maybe I should just die there. Then I felt string around my big toe and I realized the trunks were attached to it, but being pulled into the vortex."
5. "I was already starting to run out of oxygen, and I remember very clearly making the mental calculation: either I use my dying breath to go after those swim trunks and risk dying, or I go up to the surface pants less in front of the girl I want to ask to the prom."
"Of course I went after the trunks. Gripped the drawstring tight between my toes, executed this in retrospect kind of amazing dolphin-like maneuver that turned me around and upside down, grabbed the trunks out of the maw of the vortex, pulled them on, and cinched them tight."
"By that point I can feel my lungs imploding. So I fan my arms and kick my legs and go to the surface. My canoe-mate was on the bank along with R--- and my friends and my teachers. Everyone cheered when I came up to the surface."
"In retrospect, yeah, I should& #39;ve let the trunks go. But maybe not? Because that young woman on the bank became my first serious girlfriend, and forty years later I& #39;m still friends with her. End of story." Long pause.
Finally my son says, "Yeah, dad, uh...I think you should& #39;ve just left the trunks and taken the L."
I said, "You think there& #39;d be no you if I& #39;d spent a few seconds longer in the water. But I like to think that you exist BECAUSE I went after the trunks." He said, "Yeah, all right, dad. A butterfly flaps its wings, et cetera."
He said, "Tell me another." "I said, & #39;One time I almost walked into an open manhole." He laughed. "You could& #39;ve died like a cartoon character." "Yeah." "Was it unmarked?" "No, there were barricades and construction workers. I had headphones on and was daydreaming."
He said, "Yeah, that is really dumb."
I told him about the time I almost went off a cliff in New Mexico putting a car in reverse to reposition the vehicle so it wouldn& #39;t run over a rock. I told him about all the times I almost got hit by cars. I told him about several other acts of monumental stupidity.
When we got inside, he laughed and said, "All right, dad, you take care of yourself."
Obviously I lost the numbering in the thread at a certain point, but whatever
