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'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'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't want to come up out of the shipwreck with no pants on. That'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'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'm still friends with her. End of story." Long pause.

Finally my son says, "Yeah, dad, uh...I think you should've just left the trunks and taken the L."

I said, "You think there'd be no you if I'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, 'One time I almost walked into an open manhole." He laughed. "You could'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'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