I was a sensitive child. I had a lot of anxiety. However, when I became a mother every worry I ever had jolted into high alert. Being fully responsible for small people who consistently and impulsively put themselves in danger was the hardest experience of my life.
Climbing could lead to stitches and broken bones. Stuffing inedible things in their mouths could lead to choking. Jumping in the pool with no flotation device could lead to drowning. As a parent of a lot of little kids, one is constantly looking out for the hazards children are blissfully unaware of. Cars. Strangers. Poisons. Fire ants. Bullies. A bone in the chicken nugget. The list is endless. Then there are the things you can't see. Viruses. Bacteria. Deadly insidious microscopic monsters. All of these things make a chill person uneasy, but they make a nervous person bat-shit looney. Alas, kids grow out of things, they learn the dangers of the world around them. They become more cautious.
Just kidding. This does not happen.
After that intense period of training and security you'd think they'd give you a break, let your overworked consciousness relax a bit. But you know what they do? They do scary stuff anyway. And lots of it.
They like moving fast. In cars, jet skis, boats, even on snow skis. They ride dirt bikes at speeds that make you want to cry. And then they crash and you do cry. Then they do it again.
They jump off cliffs into rivers, do back flips off 2nd story boat houses into the lake and swim further out into the ocean than you would ever do. They bungee jump off of bridges. They shoot guns and bows and arrows. They travel across the world to places you've never been, where you nor they know nary a soul, and there is no cell service more than half the time. They take unreliable trains and uncertain taxis. On a road trip, they stop to admire a biplane and within the next few minutes are in the clouds with a pilot whose credentials they know nothing of. They attend week long music festivals where they meet strangers. Then they go visit those strangers for the weekend.
They cannot do enough of anything you ever told them not to do. It's not danger to them, it's adventure.
God forbid life should get boring.
Once or twice a year, these offspring of mine, become temporarily crazed over their love for monstrously obnoxious fireworks. They then gather others whose adoration for explosives is equal to or greater than their own. This year it's their spouses. At this 'community outreach' you will also find a bonfire, barbecue, beer, Jim Beam, trucks named after dinosaurs, and a bunch of dogs who, like me, hate fireworks. If it sounds a little redneck, that's because it is. My husband is the ring leader of this fear-fest that they call a 'party.' The kids worship him for his generous gifts of "Death from the Sky" a giant box of TNT that promises a minimum charge of 500 Gs. Mostly, they adore him for his enthusiasm and his lack of fear. He's the FUN parent. Just look at what he got today. He didn't tell me anything about the purchase of this mother load, because he "wanted to surprise the kids."
That explains why, in his glee, he promptly texted this picture to my daughter and, in her glee, she promptly put it on Facebook and that's how I found out. SURPRISE!!!
I suspect there is another reason he didn't want to tell me. (It is easier to ask for forgiveness than agreement... or something like that.)
"You worry too much," they say. "Everything will be fine" they say.
"Relax Mom. With no traffic, the hospital is only 35 minutes from here, and we could cut that in less than half if we take the Raptor instead of an ambulance."
