The safety/adventure ratio

This morning, someone asked me where my sense of adventure was and I replied, "Right behind my sense of safety." But now I wonder, which should come first?

When I was young, my sense of adventure definitely lead the pack of everything else... hence the many broken bones of my childhood. I liked to jump a lot, over everything. I often thought to myself, "Oh yeah, I can make that." I wasn't always successful, as you might see from the before and after pictures at Dr. Winkleman's office - I owe that orthodontist my smile. Then there's the mountain biking incident followed closely by the trampoline incident which resulted in a fun little wheel chair, great for popping wheelies.

Even before that, I can remember the grass stains from rolling down the huge grassy hill outside the Alief natatorium with my friend Casey. I think everyone probably has a similar memory, but as adults, do we ever do that kind of stuff anymore?

When I did all those things, I wasn't thinking about being safe or getting hurt. I just thought it was fun, or I was trying to impress a boy, but mostly it was for the fun. For the adventure. Did my friends and I ride our bikes into the woods because we thought it was cool that noone knew where we were? Maybe, but that was PART of the fun. We weren't thinking about getting kidnapped. If you had told us it was possible that a creepy man was waiting in the wood, we wouldn't have gone into the wood!

When I was an 'early teenager', I wanted so badly to bungie jump on our family trip to South Padre Island. Now, my toes sweat when I watch a movie that involves heights. I don't go fast anymore. I don't jump over things. And I definitely don't roll down hills.

Safety IS a good thing, especially if you're a woman. You look around when you walk alone. You check the backseat of your car before you get in. One thing I just recently learned from an article in Fitness magazine is to never fall into a routine; predators rely on your routine. I never would have thought of that; I find comfort in routines. But this is a different type of caution than the one that prevents me from speeding down a steep hill on my bike.

Although, when I really think about it, I did go down class three rapids on a fortified boogie board in Colorado two summers ago. I did fly through a Costa Rican cloud forest on a zip line a few years ago. I went LOOKING for sharks in volcano tubes on my last dive in Kauai at Tunnels beach. So it seems that my adventure is still there, quietly flexing it's muscles in the mirror, it just doesn't want to do the same things it used to. It doesn't want to take advantage of every little opportunity, just the really good ones. Maybe a tip toward safety on the safety/adventure ratio is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, I don't break as many bones as I used too.