The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’ve always wondered why folks climb the Himalayan or hike solo across Antarctica or want to be the first ones into space. Jeff Bezos is headed up and now Richard Branson plans to beat him to the punch. “Asked about what his kids and wife thought of his attempt to be the first tourist in space and how his family reacted to the news that he would be on the flight, Branson said his children are adventurous, but it’s clear they get that quality from him.
‘As a family, our motto is, ‘The brave men don’t live forever but the cautious do not live at all.’ And so, as a family, we love to say ‘Yes.’ My wife is the sort of person who would be terrified on a Virgin Atlantic airplane. She’s the last person who would want to do something like this. But she’s known me since I tried to balloon across the Atlantic or the Pacific or around the world, and she still seems to love us.’”

I guess what the Great Adventurer is saying is that his wife doesn’t really live at all. Bezos wife took half his billions and said adios. I suspect she’s living pretty high on the hog, at least by most folks’ standards, maybe not Branson’s. Evidently there are folks who need the adrenaline rush of near death to help them feel alive. Trust me, I’m not one of those people. I’ve taken a few chances in my 71 years that might have ended badly, might actually have killed me, but they didn’t make me feel alive, mostly made me glad I was. When I hear people of my generation say they never thought they would live past 30, I want to laugh out loud. It wasn’t that we thought our lifestyles were so dangerous, it was more that we just couldn’t imagine the future.

Or that the future seemed so banal and boring we refused to contemplate the house in the suburbs, the less than romantic marriage, the squabbling kids and the career that seemed so much smaller than the dreams of our youth. Me, I figured on living to a ripe old age. Given enough time, there would be plenty of room for course corrections. Getting crippled in a fall into a crevasse on Mt. Rainier wasn’t part of the Plan. If you want thrills and chills, try walking the tightrope of unemployment without a safety net, try making a living being an artist. It’s enough danger for me and chances are it won’t kill you. Make you crazy, maybe, but it won’t kill you. And I’m pretty sure if you take life with a degree of caution, you’ll be just fine too.

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