Jericho: Dangerous Awakenings
Everyday we all do stupid and dangerous things and we call it "just part of life". A calculated risk. We probably shouldn't start thinking about it, but there is nothing I like better than causing a good mental break down.
Just take an ordinary day and look at the silly things we all do. Start by getting out of bed. There are statistics that show that most heart attacks begin first thing in the morning. The mere act of getting out of bed, showered and off to work may be too much stress for any one of us. Add the blast of stress from the load of emails we get first thing or the pile of work left by the night crew and a strong cup of morning java, you have a sure fire coronary in the making. Just getting out of bed is a deadly risk. Makes me want to smash my alarm clock and never leave the safety of my comforter.
Then, we have our morning hygiene ritual. Again, statistics show most accidents happen in the home and most of those in the bathroom - little wonder. In one room we have water, electricity, cleaning agents of various strengths from tooth paste to DrainO, razor blades and detal floss - your bathroom may vary. I was shocked while staying in a hotel recently, they had a hair-dryer mounted on a wall. There was a tag on the cord warning of the dangers of mixing water and electricity - yet this device was hung less than six inches from the shower. How close is your dryer to your sink? Close enough it could fall in? Bathroom sinks are usually crowded with electric razors, tooth brushes, hot combs and any other number of devices that plug in - what foolishness! Every year people are electrocuted when they instinctively reach for a device that just fell in the water. They set fires with curling irons left on towels. Poor wiring and sleep deprived brains are a bad mix. I'm personally waiting for the morning our wiring lights our home up like some kid's science fair project. How many times have you gotten a jolt or a minor burn because you were stupid? Take he next logical step - could what happened have been worsened?
Then we get in the shower. I looked around my shower not too long ago; to the right eye, it's an iron maiden! Start with a slippery floor layered in lubricants like water, soap and shampoo. Then you have metal protrusions of various types, from faucets and spouts to shower caddies and door handles. Then there is the door - glass no less. Slip, fall, break the glass, impaled with no chance to free yourself before you hemorrhage to death. Oh, yeah, I've been whacked in the head with a falling shower rod or two. Good clean fun.
Okay, you make it out of the shower and now it's time to shave. Applying a surgically sharp blade to scrape the hair off our skin - we all do it. Most of us do it at least a few times a week, some daily. Be it legs, face, pits or other areas. Does it ever strike you as odd that you are doing this? Does anyone worry, as I do, that they will slip, cut themselves very deeply, maybe really hurting themselves? No, just you, Jericho. Everyone else's arteries are made of titanium, Flesh Boy!
Fine. Now you are out of the bathroom. You are cleaned and scraped and blown dry. Time to put on clothes. I'm not the least nimble person I know - I'm pretty good on my feet when I need to be. But, I can't tell you how many times I have nearly killed myself trying to put on a pair of underwear. Okay, maybe I am a klutz - but I am not the only one. I have seen plenty of interesting body moves and practices in the name of getting into clothing. Women and tight jeans or panty hose. Men and suspenders. The shoe dance! Then, there is the neck tie - nothing like wearing a silk noose to make one feel like a man!
Two words: contact lenses. Yeek!
Then we go get in to our vehicle of choice for the ride to work. This is the most unbelievable dance of death I can imagine - but we all do it everyday. Take a few thousand people, each one wielding a ton or two of steel, plastic, glass, gasoline and other corrosives. Each one of these people are trying to get to where they are going as fast as possible without alerting the law, spilling their lattes, messing up their makeup as they try to apply it, missing their favorite song or interrupting their cellular phone call - oh, right, and trying not to hit each other. We have a wide variety of skill levels from expert driver to novice, with a healthy mix of distracted, angry, frustrated, rushed, oblivious, insane, intoxicated and stupid. Throw in road hazards like rain, ice, pot holes, car parts, farm animals and add to that the ever present old-lady-turned-on-her-right-blinker-while-merging-into-left-lane and car-died-blocking-three-lanes-of-traffic-in-rush-hour. How any of us ever get to work is a complete mystery to me. I hug my seat belt and wait for the flash of the pyros setting off my air-bag as my face punches into it at sixty miles an hour.
There is also a trust element we have to start examining at this point. We trust that the guy in the next lane is smart and not suicidal. We do this all the time. If we didn't trust other drivers, we couldn't have multi-lane highways. But, we all agree that those little yellow and white lines are like walls and we all need to stay between them. We trust that everyone can read - I was once in a car that had to dodge an oncoming car who must have gone up the wrong ramp because they didn't read. Instead of turning around, they just decided to balls it out and keep flying down the highway at full speed going against traffic. I bet that person lived, too. We all trust that the traffic lights are working and that they won't all go green at the same time. We trust that when we cross the street, the drivers will actually stop (well, they don't here in Seattle, they creep into your back pocket, the moment you are half an inch out of the way they peel out behind you to be stopped ten feet away by traffic. Oh, and it's legal to run a red light if you are forced to stop by traffic on the other side of the crosswalk - people in the crosswalk are not even thought of - unless their lifeless bodies ruin the paint job).
We trust that the last guy to maintain the elevator actually did his job. We trust that when we put our hand between the doors they will stop and open for us, not chop off the hand or carry us up six feet by our wrists and drop us. We trust that the elevator is in working order, that the cables and brakes are all fine and that they won't break and send us hurtling to our deaths. We trust that the coffee urn hasn't been poisoned, spat in, and that the decaf is far away from us in that strange orange pot.
We take all these risks and trust all of these people just to get to work. Think of what we do just to get through the day.
Then, there's the drive home.
Just take an ordinary day and look at the silly things we all do. Start by getting out of bed. There are statistics that show that most heart attacks begin first thing in the morning. The mere act of getting out of bed, showered and off to work may be too much stress for any one of us. Add the blast of stress from the load of emails we get first thing or the pile of work left by the night crew and a strong cup of morning java, you have a sure fire coronary in the making. Just getting out of bed is a deadly risk. Makes me want to smash my alarm clock and never leave the safety of my comforter.
Then, we have our morning hygiene ritual. Again, statistics show most accidents happen in the home and most of those in the bathroom - little wonder. In one room we have water, electricity, cleaning agents of various strengths from tooth paste to DrainO, razor blades and detal floss - your bathroom may vary. I was shocked while staying in a hotel recently, they had a hair-dryer mounted on a wall. There was a tag on the cord warning of the dangers of mixing water and electricity - yet this device was hung less than six inches from the shower. How close is your dryer to your sink? Close enough it could fall in? Bathroom sinks are usually crowded with electric razors, tooth brushes, hot combs and any other number of devices that plug in - what foolishness! Every year people are electrocuted when they instinctively reach for a device that just fell in the water. They set fires with curling irons left on towels. Poor wiring and sleep deprived brains are a bad mix. I'm personally waiting for the morning our wiring lights our home up like some kid's science fair project. How many times have you gotten a jolt or a minor burn because you were stupid? Take he next logical step - could what happened have been worsened?
Then we get in the shower. I looked around my shower not too long ago; to the right eye, it's an iron maiden! Start with a slippery floor layered in lubricants like water, soap and shampoo. Then you have metal protrusions of various types, from faucets and spouts to shower caddies and door handles. Then there is the door - glass no less. Slip, fall, break the glass, impaled with no chance to free yourself before you hemorrhage to death. Oh, yeah, I've been whacked in the head with a falling shower rod or two. Good clean fun.
Okay, you make it out of the shower and now it's time to shave. Applying a surgically sharp blade to scrape the hair off our skin - we all do it. Most of us do it at least a few times a week, some daily. Be it legs, face, pits or other areas. Does it ever strike you as odd that you are doing this? Does anyone worry, as I do, that they will slip, cut themselves very deeply, maybe really hurting themselves? No, just you, Jericho. Everyone else's arteries are made of titanium, Flesh Boy!
Fine. Now you are out of the bathroom. You are cleaned and scraped and blown dry. Time to put on clothes. I'm not the least nimble person I know - I'm pretty good on my feet when I need to be. But, I can't tell you how many times I have nearly killed myself trying to put on a pair of underwear. Okay, maybe I am a klutz - but I am not the only one. I have seen plenty of interesting body moves and practices in the name of getting into clothing. Women and tight jeans or panty hose. Men and suspenders. The shoe dance! Then, there is the neck tie - nothing like wearing a silk noose to make one feel like a man!
Two words: contact lenses. Yeek!
Then we go get in to our vehicle of choice for the ride to work. This is the most unbelievable dance of death I can imagine - but we all do it everyday. Take a few thousand people, each one wielding a ton or two of steel, plastic, glass, gasoline and other corrosives. Each one of these people are trying to get to where they are going as fast as possible without alerting the law, spilling their lattes, messing up their makeup as they try to apply it, missing their favorite song or interrupting their cellular phone call - oh, right, and trying not to hit each other. We have a wide variety of skill levels from expert driver to novice, with a healthy mix of distracted, angry, frustrated, rushed, oblivious, insane, intoxicated and stupid. Throw in road hazards like rain, ice, pot holes, car parts, farm animals and add to that the ever present old-lady-turned-on-her-right-blinker-while-merging-into-left-lane and car-died-blocking-three-lanes-of-traffic-in-rush-hour. How any of us ever get to work is a complete mystery to me. I hug my seat belt and wait for the flash of the pyros setting off my air-bag as my face punches into it at sixty miles an hour.
There is also a trust element we have to start examining at this point. We trust that the guy in the next lane is smart and not suicidal. We do this all the time. If we didn't trust other drivers, we couldn't have multi-lane highways. But, we all agree that those little yellow and white lines are like walls and we all need to stay between them. We trust that everyone can read - I was once in a car that had to dodge an oncoming car who must have gone up the wrong ramp because they didn't read. Instead of turning around, they just decided to balls it out and keep flying down the highway at full speed going against traffic. I bet that person lived, too. We all trust that the traffic lights are working and that they won't all go green at the same time. We trust that when we cross the street, the drivers will actually stop (well, they don't here in Seattle, they creep into your back pocket, the moment you are half an inch out of the way they peel out behind you to be stopped ten feet away by traffic. Oh, and it's legal to run a red light if you are forced to stop by traffic on the other side of the crosswalk - people in the crosswalk are not even thought of - unless their lifeless bodies ruin the paint job).
We trust that the last guy to maintain the elevator actually did his job. We trust that when we put our hand between the doors they will stop and open for us, not chop off the hand or carry us up six feet by our wrists and drop us. We trust that the elevator is in working order, that the cables and brakes are all fine and that they won't break and send us hurtling to our deaths. We trust that the coffee urn hasn't been poisoned, spat in, and that the decaf is far away from us in that strange orange pot.
We take all these risks and trust all of these people just to get to work. Think of what we do just to get through the day.
Then, there's the drive home.
posted by Jericho Brown at 10/24/2003 11:45:00 PM
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