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My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator
- balabaster 11y agoI hope my idiocy is immortalized by my kids like this.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoYears ago I worked with someone whose father hunted/poached alligators in the south for a living. My friend was made to go into the water to retrieve the gators. I heard this story often enough that I 100% believe it. (My version of this: my Dad had me every month clean the bottom of his large sailboat in San Francisco Bay when I was a kid. The water was really cold, but no alligators :-) And, I got SCUBA gear for doing the boat cleaning.)
- eellpp 11y agowhat a refreshing read and what style. I had to check out for the writer : Harrison Scott Key http://www.amazon.com/Harrison-Scott-Key/e/B00NKZI2QG http://www.amazon.com/Harrison-Scott-Key/e/B00NKZI2QG Surely on my reading list.
- kjhughes 11y agoWhat a witty, well-written story in the spirit of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), albeit with a father-push rather than a child-pull twist. His description of how he'd be safe from the alligator following his father's command to enter the water was hilarious: Immediately, I formulated a plan, which involved surrounding myself with a protective cloud of urine. And then later, with his own daughters: "If one of you gets eaten, we will name the boat after you," I said. Good read. Recommended.
- MattGrommes 11y agoThis made me laugh out loud: "He'd started calling me "Fat-Tart" because he thought I was fat, which I was, owing to a glandular disorder that made me eat Pop-Tarts until I stopped feeling sad."
- mud_dauber 11y agoThe river behind our house was too cold for gators - but I completely grok the "protective cloud" strategy. Agreed, what a fun read.
- tajen 11y agoAs a non-English native I didn't understand: Were there alligators in the river? Were the kids afraid of their own imagination? Is there a double meaning to the word "gator"? Thank you
- indenturedsmile 11y agoThere were definitely alligators. I doubt the author was trying to say they were afraid of their own imaginations. It's possible that he imagined the alligator that was next to him in the water, but it's equally possible that he wasn't.
- smellf 11y agoThere _were_ alligators in the river. He almost certainly imagined the gator next to him in the water, but swimming in it was still very dangerous. Gator has only one meaning. The protective cloud of pee is just a joke. It's funny because pee is useless to protect you from alligators. It's also funny because peeing yourself is funny.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- grrface 11y agoWhen I was about 6, we would drive from New Orleans to the Pearl River to go water skiing (or in my case, tubing). There are a handful of stories that get told of my dad keeping one eye on us kids and one eye on the gator on the banks in that river. This story brought a smile to my face.
- js2 11y agoThis is wonderful writing. I went to the University of Florida. Its recreational lake[1] (where students canoe, water ski, swim, etc) is infested with gators (the reptile kind, not the students, though there are lots of them too). No matter how many times I was told no students had ever been attacked there[2], swimming in that lake was still nerve-wracking. [1] http://www.recsports.ufl.edu/lake-wauburg http://www.recsports.ufl.edu/lake-wauburg [2] http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070614/SUNFRONT/706140336 http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070614/SUNFRONT/7061403...
- nkozyra 11y agoFellow Floridian and UF grad here - the gators are scary but honestly I won't swim in any lake in Florida due to the vast variety of amoebas, bacteria and waste. The gators are just a quick visual cue that you really shouldn't do it.
- iolothebard 11y agoYeah those brain eating amoebas are far scarier because you can't see them :-/
- CapitalistCartr 11y agoThere are three kinds of water in Florida. A body of water here has either chlorine, salt, or gators in it. If you don't find the first two in it, it has the third.
- jonah 11y agoI dunno man, when I was young my aunt showed us pictures of gators in her swimming pool.
- logfromblammo 11y agoGive that gator a margarita, and it would have all three.
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- fiatmoney 11y agoCalled him Amos Moses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDtNsIKOhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDtNsIKOhs
- robbrown451 11y agoNot exactly hacker news but so what. Awesome.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Mc_Big_G 11y agoMy Dad tried to kill me with a front-end loader and a ton of firewood.
- gadders 11y agoMine used to get me to stand next to him on the edge of cliffs labelled unsafe.
- SteveGerencser 11y agoMine used to teach me chemistry and physics by doing things like putting lighter fluid in my hand, lighting it and then saying go show your mom. If even a tenth of the things we did as kids was done today I have to think CPS would be involved.
- murbard2 11y agoYes it is well written and the style is light and refreshing, but am I the only one who think this is horrific child abuse?
- jimmaswell 11y agoYeah, making your kids dive into an alligator-filled body of water? How does any sane person not see that as deplorable? Would it be equally character-building to make them run across a freeway to find a dropped pair of sunglasses? What's wrong with everyone in this thread? Did they not read that part?
- marshray 11y agoWhen I lived in Florida, we called that "swimming".
- jimmaswell 11y agoThere are places in Florida to swim without alligators.
- rosser 11y agoYes. Indoor pools.
- jimmaswell 11y agoExactly, or outdoor pools.
- jordan0day 11y agoI've never lived near alligators, but my guess is that the father had, and had a decent understanding about the level of risk involved. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_alligator_attacks_in_the_United_States_by_decade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_alligator_attacks... There had been a grand total of 4 fatal alligator attacks in the USA in the 1980's. It seems to me that the father probably realized that there wasn't actually much danger involved for his boys. And I think your proposed scenario > Would it be equally character-building to make them run across a freeway to find a dropped pair of sunglasses? is a little disproportionate, risk-wise: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809-456.pdf http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809-456.pdf "Pedestrian fatalities from all crashes reached a low of 4,763 fatalities in 2000"
- venomsnake 11y agoThe olde times when kids were allowed to have childhood ... I think we see once again effect of the hallowing of the middle here - you are either cuddled and overprotected or have to mature too fast and too rough. No middle ground. My dad tried to kill me with recoil of double barrel 12 gauge shotgun when I was 5. He had to hold my whole body not to fall from the kick ...
- tokai 11y agoMy dad would often tell me "I'll beat you if you die" when I did something like climbing trees too high. Great read.
- iamthepieman 11y agoI took 4 of my kids up an embankment in the woods last year. We were out on a nature walk, looking for cool rocks, fiddleheads and whatever caught our eye. It started out mild enough. Looking at topo maps it was about 100 vertical feet per 200 horizontal feet at first. But it gradually got steeper and by about half way up I had to climb behind the younger ones with my hand on their back to keep them from slipping down. at the top we could see that it ended in a sheer cliff about 15 feet tall. I knew that at the top of the cliff was a beautiful wild flower meadow because I had been up there via another route earlier in the year. We thought we saw a crack in the cliff that would allow us to shimmy up and make the top so even though it was getting very steep (about 50-60 degree slope) we pushed on. The crack was too narrow though and when we turned around to go back down I saw how crazy we were to have gone that far. I had the two oldest grab my shoulders, sat the 5 year old behind me straddling my waist and put the youngest between my legs and slid down on my butt. the slide down was exhilarating and we vowed to return when everyone was a little older and more capable. I was genuinely scared for a brief moment when we turned around at the top but I couldn't let my children know that and we all learned something about our physical limits that day. I think often about what to let my kids experience and what to protect them from. I would rather let them explore their boundaries and get hurt when they are young and I'm around to take care of them than for them to grow up afraid of everything or even worse, not afraid of anything. edit: found a map of the area[0] [0] http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g
- digi_owl 11y agoTo me that looks like near vertical...
- sliverstorm 11y agoDarn steep to be sure! However vertical faces typically result in the topo lines merging together to the point they cannot be distinguished and become one brown blur. Some big mountain walls for example: http://images.summitpost.org/original/482664.jpg http://images.summitpost.org/original/482664.jpg http://www.mtnmouse.com/california/20060624yosemite/map_yosemite_valley2ae_tunnel_cw720g180.jpg http://www.mtnmouse.com/california/20060624yosemite/map_yose... Your parent comment's map looks like 500+ feet of vertical, so I'm fairly impressed by the 5 year old :) If it's a standard USGS topo map, his track should be about 150 meters or 500 feet, putting them right at 45 degrees (shallower at the start, steeper at the end)
- nathanb 11y agoI feel like this is the sort of thing that would be amazing and fulfilling unless something ends up going wrong and you spend the rest of your life dealing with crushing guilt. The idea of having kids is terrifying, because there would be part of me that wants to give them expanding and amazing experiences like this and part of me that wants to protect them from anything terrible happening. I feel like the only winning move is not to play.
- nathanb 11y agoI'd like to hear from the folks downvoting this comment. Is it parents who think I'm talking rubbish (I may very well be; I was just describing how I felt, not what I thought was objectively true)? People who thought I was criticizing the article?
- kaitai 11y agoI didn't downvote and it's not gray now. But I want to chime in that you aren't the only one with this fear, and it doesn't help that I know a 2-year-old who died in a canoeing accident, wearing a life-vest and with responsible adults. The canoe capsized and she got stuck in some branches and they couldn't find her in time. Every day our own mortality lurks around the edges of our own lives, but we manage to ignore it most of the time. When we feel responsible for someone else's life, though, it feels different.
- codingdave 11y agoI understand that fear -- People sometimes don't understand why I say I am glad my daughter snapped her collarbone. It is not that I want my children to ever get hurt. It is that, as a parent, I've now been through it. I've had a child break. And she healed. So now I take my kids out every weekend into the wilderness, knowing that we might not come back unscathed, but we will come back, and their lives (and mine) are better for it.
- nathanb 11y agoHow can you be confident that "we will come back"? (Not trying to criticize your decision; just trying to understand it).
- morpheous 11y agoBest title ever ...
- daily_dose 11y agoThis has a lot to do with computer science, great post!
- shiggerino 11y agoAmericans have a weird concept of safety. Most of them won't let their kids out of the house alone because of "stranger danger", but put them in charge of giant crude oil or passenger trains and they are sure to fuck up spectacularly on a regular basis.
- gonzo 11y agoKids these days: http://i.imgur.com/gyn49gh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gyn49gh.jpg Kids back then: http://i.imgur.com/ZYDIKGK.png http://i.imgur.com/ZYDIKGK.png
- chris_wot 11y agoAs an Australian, I'm a little horrified because although we don't have alligators, we have crocodiles. And both are extremely territorial, aggressive carnivores. We lose at least one person a year from attacks - this story could have been far less amusing. And remember, we don't have Steve Irwin to wrestle the bastards any more. I refer you to Crocodile attack in Australia: an analysis of its incidence and review of the pathology and management of crocodilian attacks in general. [1] 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16209470 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16209470
- deltaecho1338 11y agoThis deserves circulation on Father's day.