Okay, 2 things: 1) This is neither an antidote to safety madness nor exactly safety madness, but the whole boiling kettles thing brought this dadaist warning to mind. For some reason, my fridge came with a butter dish--flat, plastic, white--you know, for holding sticks of butter? On the bottom it says "DO NOT BOIL."
2) When I was about 12, my family went to Hawaii [Side note: We lived in a rented, run-down old house (my room would drop to 40 degrees farenheit at night in winter), drove used cars til they dropped, and listened to 8-tracks into the CD era, but my parents believed in travel.] and we went to a beach that was famous for surfing. The surf was high, and difficult to manage, especially for Iowans, who strangely lack experience with high surf (go figure). So we were out there trying to body surf, with no guides or help or anything of course, and a man came up to my dad, on shore, and said it was a very dangerous beach and that the surf that day was especially dangerous, some experienced surfers had died like the week before. Dad called us in and I broke my tailbone being slammed onto the sand, and felt a serious undertow for the first time in my life. I remember being trapped under the water, watching it all slide over me, and not being able to get up to the surface--being pinned down by the pull of the water. Luckily, I did eventually make it out. But it was rather harrowing. Moreso, in fact, than boiling kettles, I think. |
