Let’s be careful out there.
For those of our readers too young to remember Hill Street Blues, that’s a reference to Sergeant Phil Esterhaus’ morning briefing to his uniformed officers, which began every episode of the 1980s television series.
And it’s come to mind lately, as The Forum reports on murders and gruesome accidents, as we read about bouncy houses catapulted into the air with children still inside and threats made against flights coming into JFK. John Nash, the brilliant mathematician made famous in A Beautiful Mind, and his wife, both in their 80s, were killed this weekend in a taxi accident. They arrived earlier than expected into Newark and didn’t want to wait for their regular driver. When elderly people die in such a horrific manner (thrown from the cab as they were), especially those, like Nash, who had achieved and contributed so much despite living with debilitating mental illness, it just seems extra wrong.
We can’t control certain things – like the waterspout-turned-mini-tornado that caused the bouncy castle to airlift in Fort Lauderdale, injuring three children in so doing. Weather, for the most part, is beyond our purview, except in the sense that we’re supposed to avoid aerosol hair sprays, take public transportation to work, and generally live our lives more sustainably if we want to slow climate change and lessen our risk of eventually spiraling into the sky, Dorothy-like, in a bouncy house. But once the wheels are set in motion, as it were, for a tornado to begin forming, we can only run for cover.
There are those who believe that even if you take precautions (like, note to self, grounding your bouncy house with stakes) or driving carefully, or wearing shoes with soles that grip in the rain, or putting on seatbelts in a cab, or walking slowly when you’re carrying something fragile, or paying greater attention when you cross the street, or avoiding altercations with strangers, or locking up your guns when you have kids in the house, or…the list is endless – you will still end up breaking the glass, tripping, whatever. In other words, let go and allow nature to run its course.
But we at The Forum think that, to a small, better-than-nothing extent, accidents can be avoided and that we can control at least some aspects of our destinies. In Old Howard Beach, at the intersections we pass through frequently, there is inevitably the other driver — on the street with the stop sign, when we have the right-of-way – who doesn’t stop at all, even for a nanosecond. So we do, even though we don’t legally have to. Many near-misses have occurred as a result. A little prudence goes a long way.
As the summer approaches, our children will be outside playing more. There’s less staying in, more going out in general. There are weekends on the shore and, thus, more traffic on the roads. There are trees to climb. There’s the beach, and the powerful waves that can knock us over and sweep us away. There are pools and diving into them. There are fireworks. There are gas grills. There’s beer in the backyard. Again, the “trouble we can get into” list is practically endless.
So, let’s be mindful of it. Let’s be aware of what we’re getting into, what we’re up against. Inasmuch as we can, knowing that some terrible things beyond our control will always happen, let’s be careful out there.
