I get it. It’s hot out. And thanks to climate change, each summer is going to be worse than the last. But that’s no reason to check your brain at the door.
Check out this video of a kid doing a backflip off one of the drawbridges here in Seattle, Washington. Well executed. And I bet it felt great.
But this is how to give a bridgetender a heart attack.
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He could have fallen backward off the railing and been badly hurt, or worse yet, fallen on to one of the millions of bicyclists or joggers that go past, their heads in clouds, and then both would have been hurt.
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He could have hit his head on the railing while doing the back flip and broken his neck.
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He could have landed on some unseen debris in the water and been impaled.
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He could have taken his plunge just as one of the motor boats came speeding through the channel, which happens, oh, about every minute or so. (A diver in Jacksonville, Florida had his face ripped off by a motor boat that didn’t see his dive flag. Now add the person falling from the sky into the mix, no flag in sight, and you get the idea.)
And thank God I wasn’t working on that drawbridge at the time. Here’s the thought process:
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“Oh sh**, that kid’s going to get himself killed!”
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“I’m going to be blamed and lose my job.”
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“Paperwork…”
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“Now I get to hold up the stereotype of the bridge troll by running those kids off the bridge.”
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“Never a cop when you need one.”
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“What if I need to open the bridge and this fool is too busy playing around to move?”
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