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& Other Madness By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal A good bit of attention is currently being paid to activities that, to my practical turn of mind, should be avoided at all costs. Regardless of the celebrity attaching to what is now being offered up as "X-treme Sports", I remain totally aloof from what strikes me as deliberately trying to see how close one can come to killing himself - without actually doing it. Although I have occasionally watched some of this insanity on television, it fails utterly to ‘light my fire’, as the phrase goes. I am not incited to do a Bungee jump from the Narrows Bridge, or sit in on an exciting game of Russian Roulette, just because some other folks do it. Perhaps I am too easily satisfied in the risk-exposure area, but I find that life as I have lived it contains all of the hazards required to keep my capillaries open and my pulse responding adequately to my most recent fright. I feel no need to arrange additional hazards for the purpose of making up a presumed shortfall of mortal exposures. Having known the ineffable experience of having people shooting at me, not in my general direction, but AT ME, there is little beyond that to closely concentrate one's attention. This is hard to explain, but if it has happened to you, you do not require explanations to empathize with the feeling to which I refer. Being a target for a serious shooter is a tough act to follow. In another priceless aspect of my long and active life, I have flown single-engine aircraft in bad weather, and over the high, rugged terrain of the northwestern United States, where mountain goats are challenged at their every step and - if your engine quits - emergency landing opportunities are scarce as hen's teeth. On one totally unforgettable occasion, I had the neurologically broadening experience of hop-skipping an airplane over a barbed-wire fence, and doing a dead-stick landing upside-own, in a pasture occupied by a bunch of cows. That single adventure sated my adrenaline requirements for a long time thereafter. In the course of merely trying to stay alive, I have faced challenges that, to a less derring-do type of individual, would surely bring noticeable palpitations and a distinct shortness of breath. I could tell you that I resisted these outward manifestations of inner turmoil, because - deep down inside - I enjoy my close brushes with danger - or perhaps even with death itself. Perhaps I could add to my heroic stature in the eyes of some readers, by saying that I realized the more terrified I was, the more quality the experience was adding to my otherwise humdrum life. But I would be lying in my teeth. I didn't enjoy frostbitten feet, in a tent, halfway up Canada’s Athabasca Glacier, since I didn't know if I would be able to walk down, across the Columbia ice field, to medical help the following morning. Had that agonizing trip proved beyond my physical capacity to walk and endure pain, the rest of the story would have been grim, indeed. So, while I managed to survive the experience, be assured I didn't plan it that way. I was not seeking to levitate myself into some "higher sense of awareness and spiritual endowment", as one apologist for life-threatening activities has explained it. It happened because of my own faulty planning, and failure to properly take care of my feet in a bitterly cold and terribly unfriendly atmosphere. It was a pure 'accident' if you prefer a one-word label. Whenever I succeed in getting myself into a really tight, life-threatening crunch, it's an accident. Depend on it. I do not seek out those near-miss situations. They have to come looking for me. This, because I am - instinctively - a very careful man. This is the quality to which I largely attribute my almost legendary longevity. Chalk it up to my lily-livered approach to hair-raising activities if you will, but I would rather die in bed with a scotch and water on the night table, than in an avalanche, on a speeding motorcycle, or at the wrong end of a Bungee line. While I grudgingly admit that sooner or later I will (probably) have to die, I do not accept this mortal sentence to be absolutely and unavoidably guaranteed. And even if it is, I hold to the notion that the firm date for my demise is not firmly fixed in the galactic accounting system. A good bit of flexibility may exist, in which to maneuver. If so, I consider it to be my inherent right (duty to mankind?) to defer that sad occasion as long as the trade-offs involved appeal to me. Moreover, I feel entitled to arrange that final scene with as much creature comfort and go-grease on the skids into beckoning eternity as I possibly can. In a word, I do not knowingly inject myself into scenarios in which my savoring a mind-blowing experience may well come at the price of an abrupt and permanent end to the life I am ostensibly seeking to enrich via "X-treme"and hazardous engagements. Perhaps I am fortunate to have found a sufficiency of excitement on my plate, just in the normal process of getting up in the morning and jogging around the arena of life as it has come to me. Maybe my inherent appetite for life-risking 'stimulation' is less than that of other, braver, more adventurous, more hairy-chested specimens than I. If so, I salute them and wish them well. I shall attend their funerals and may even shed a tear for them (if there is nothing more demanding to occupy me on that particular day), but I shall not willfully choose to follow them into an early grave. Doing so does not square with my current plans for the tag-end of my long and eventful life. But heaven forfend that my reticence for deliberate risk-taking should operate to impede the life-threatening activities of others who are so inclined. Go ahead! Take that drink out of an unlabeled bottle. Dive into an unlit swimming pool. Skydiving can be lots of fun, provided the 'chute opens as guaranteed. Skiing at night, in the moonlight, on a forested hillside is a rare treat, unless a tree pops up in front of you. Racing motorcycles on a frozen lake can take your breath away. But if you happen to stray onto a thin spot in the ice, the breathlessness can last forever. And so on. This is what the "X-treme Games" are all about...... Risks. I'm not a very religious man, but I consider suicide to be a sin. Even worse, it's a terrible waste of life - which is really all we have. I don't need to gratuitously endanger my life to convince myself that I'm really living. ======== END ======== Lorenzo Dee Belveal ©Copyright March, 2000 All right reserved
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