Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.
At ease, Civillians!
But when I say ‘at ease’, I don’t necessarily mean you should relax. We must always stay vigilant about personal safety issues, but especially so at the end of the year when time is running out on the statistic-keeping for 2012.
Don’t get me wrong. It is awful to fall down the stairs, no matter when that happens. But if you fall down the stairs during the last week of the year your calamity won’t have the same effect on the manufacturers of handrails or stair treads that it might have if you took your tumble in, say, January. Stair accessory manufacturers have already closed the books on 2012. They’ve decided if they had a good year or bad in the never-ending battle with gravity. What might be a personal disaster for you would come too late to indicate any kind of a trend in stairway safety, one way or another.
It would be like being the last soldier to get shot in a long war.
So stay safe in these final days of 2012, and I say that with full knowledge that this is a primary time for encountering extreme cold, glare ice and liberal amounts of alcohol – all of them are elements that actively work AGAINST personal safety and security. Cold, Ice and Alcohol. CIA! Spooky.
So be vigilant. Be hesitant to take any unwise risk. If someone suggests that you take the Christmas lights down from the peak of the house before New Year’s Day even though the ground and the roof are covered with ice, just say ‘no’. If the thought occurs to you that you’d like to rinse the thick layer of dust off your kitchen radio while it’s still plugged in, ask yourself if that’s smart. If a smart-aleck suggest that you lick raw cookie dough off the moving parts of your new kitchen stand mixer while it is still running, send that person away. In fact, if you think any specific activity is bound to be risky, it’s never wrong to say “wait ’til next year.”
After all, it’s just a couple of days’ delay! And then you can resolve to be totally injury free in 2013!
Yours in safety,
B.S.O. Rafferty
I think this is a safety statistic fanatic’s take on an important issue. Really, it’s as important to be careful now as it will be in January or June. But whatever reason he uses to give us a stern warning is fine with me, because I know B.S.O.R. has a need to waggle his finger at us and it keeps him healthy to be constantly alarmed at what we might do.
What potentially risky behavior will you foreswear in 2013?
Trail Baboon 
Eating asparagus.
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youll poke your eye out
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I’ll throw myself on that particular grenade for you, Clyde. Feel free to send me all the asparagus you care to.
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parsnips
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in a pear tree
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I will take the parsnips if I get them out of the pear tree.
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Waitress: “Sir, how did you find your hamburger?”
Customer: “…I just lifted up the parsnip and there it was…”
(One of my favorites.) 🙂
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i like it
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Good morning. I will try to think before I speak and avoid damage from sharp replies aimed at me.
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🙂
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thats whee i get into trouble…thinking
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I think you are right. Oops, I think I shouldn’t have said that.
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heehee
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i will foreswear to avoid to committing to anything that i can be reminded later i am not doing a good job at following through on. the main trouble i get into with new years resolution is that i pick stuff that is so hard. quit doing something , start doing something , how about keep on doing something that is good for me like checking in on the trail and the baboons out there. so if that idea is twisted around to fit the question, i will foreswear to avoid avoiding the trail baboon and hope that the results of doing so enable me to be a better person , better prepared to go out into the cold cruel world with the reassurance that the trail is there where i can get to it in times of need on a regular basis and thus fulfill my resolution for the year of 2013
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There you go, tim. Use the Trail to keep you on the right path.
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I shall once again foreswear lutefisk. And haggis. But not cheese.
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I should at least try to avoid eating way too much ice cream, but I doubt that there is any chance that I will do that.
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Define “too much”…once a day? Once a meal?…Any less than once a week seems like “not enough.”
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Explain to me again how advice like this is going to keep us on the right path.
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Usually I don’t have any for breakfast. Beyond that, any time is possible. I am very far from “not enough”. At least twice a day on most days.
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I once–with considerable arrogance–dismissed drinking beer with breakfast. It seemed to me that a person could hardly go lower than that. And then I tried it.
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There is, from time to time, an appropriate occasion for a breakfast beer. Ditto ice cream for breakfast. Safer to foreswear pop-tarts for breakfast (or pop-tarts altogether).
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i remember the german b&b in cologne where the downstairs breakfast room was empty when i amd my buddy went down for chees and crackers wonder ful jusice wonder ful bread and some fruit. the meat eaters ahd other choices. some granola and yougert and great tea well before we finished three guys came down one looking like wc fields with a mean headache. he order a breakfast beer as his friend began breakfast then a second and he started coming around then the third and he was ready for the day. tough to keep the blood level at the right ratio through the day but he had it for the moment. he was not drunk or in any pain. he was in his element. beer for breakfast does have a place int he universe. not four you and me regularly but i remember that guy when the conversation rolls around to this topic. reminded me of my uncle casey who was either a happy friendly drunk or a mean sob depepnding what time of day you caught him. breakfast beer before work>>? he was successful enough he didnt have to work after he hit about 30 . hed stop in to his business and raise hell just because he was the boss and then head down to the bar. not a life for me or you but it is a life just the same.
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I am swearing off all public lecturing and presentations. I did far too much this year. It stresses me and it takes time away from my family.
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THINK
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i like i think
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As many baboons know, I have a steep set of stairs going into my basement. Eleven steps. Anyone like BSO Rafferty would identify those stairs as highly dangerous, almost treacherous.
For most of the 36 years I’ve lived in this little bungalow, I more or less lived in the basement (it’s a long story and not a fun one). That includes several decades in which my freelance office was in the basement, plus the television and sound system. So I was down there a LOT, but the coffee, refrigerator, the shower, my family and many other things I valued were upstairs. What does that translate to? It translates into an estimated 210,240 trips up those stairs and the same number going down. Give or take several thousand.
In all those trips up and down, I have fallen exactly once. A great deal of dry sherry was involved with that fall, and I don’t remember details. I had the rubbery looseness of a drunk, and nothing was broken in the incident.
Returning to Dale’s question, I have recently moved my life upstairs and now live above ground rather than underground like a hibernating woodchuck. So, to the extent possible, I have sworn off traversing those stairs (and I long ago swore off drinking large quantities of dry sherry). There are only two reasons I have to go into the basement now, and you’d be surprised how rarely I actually need to run a laundry.
Here I am, an upstairs guy, blinking in the light and wishing you all a safe new year!
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At my age I am no longer bouncing up and down stairs. My big feet don’t fit very well in stair steps. I find myself making more use of railings these days. BSOR would approve of this, I suppose.
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I hope you don’t mean you are sliding down railings these days. There is a commercial for Samsung phones currently running on TV that shows the hazards of that.
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I think the world would be a more festive and happy place if folks did more railing sliding. I, for one, would be happier about going down the steps in the morning fore breakfast if I could slide down a railing (or fireman’s pole) to do it.
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That’s a fun commercial. “Walk it off Santa.” the one guy says… and I always think of Kevin Kling; ‘Rub it hard’!
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I use the railing to steady myself. Years ago I might have slide down some railings. I still could slide down some of them, but most of the time I am glad they are there to hold me and keep me from falling if miss a step.
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How many steps can a woodchuck chew if the woodchuck stays upstairs?
What will the woodchuck do, now that Steve has left his lair?
Pour the Sherry, decant the Port:
Steve is now in an upstairs resort!
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I love it, Renee!
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Speaking of Sherry and Port, what does a person do with an almost full bottle of dry Marsala after the Tiramisu is made?
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How about a nice chicken Marsala?
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I never even thought of that. Thanks. There’s only so much zabaglione a person can make and eat.
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You can make more Tiramisu and send it TO ME! In spite of my tight food budget, I splurged on a container of Tiramisu Gelato. OMG — what a sinful delight! Tried telling the boys not to touch Mom’s special treat, but then … now they know about it, too! Drat it all ….
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welcome lazurus again
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Morning-
Boy, I won’t know what I’m going to avoid until I get there and the little voice in my head says ‘This is not a good idea’. Sometimes I listen.
Regarding stairs, here at the theater I have several rather steep staircases. A few years ago I was coming down from the catwalks carrying a ‘snow machine’ (A ‘slightly bigger than a breadbox’ sized thing that makes soap sud snow.) when I slipped. I was coming down backwards as the steps are steep, but multiple short flights. When I lost my balance I was falling backward then and I knew there was a wall close behind me so wouldn’t fall far. And I didn’t. But got a heck of a bruise on my leg where the snow machine bashed into it and cracked the screen of my phone where the hanger hit. Also bent the hanger but that could be fixed.
Another steep, but longer stairway goes up to the prop loft here. I was on the phone one day and saw a student come into the shop, then he disappeared and a few minutes later there’s a ‘THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP BAM!!’ I throw the phone down and run out onstage. There’s the kid standing there and first thing he says is “I’m OK.” but he’s looking a little freaked. Hmm, ok, but what was that noise? Well, he was going up to props to look for something but then slipped and slid down — on his feet– about half way down the stairs. And then he says very calmly but still looking rather freaked “I don’t want to go up there again”.
And that’s OK. Why don’t you just sit down here and breath and tell me what you need up there…
Have good days everyone!
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when i went in to the doctor for either my broken shoulder or my broken foot last decade. the doc asked me if i knew when i went to do the task that ended up causing the broken body part that i was doing something that would likely end up being painful and or dangerous. i told him that i thought i was just doing normal every day stuff but i guess it was dangerous enough i wouldnt ask my workers to do it. i woud do it myself because i knew it was ok (make sense out of that one ) so if you blissfully go through the life until you slide down the stairs more power to you. and it sounds like your attitude is passed on to the understudies.
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Yes, theaters can be dangerous places. Rickety cat walks, steep stairs to special storage areas, falling lights and heavy curtains, and flying apparatuses that fail. Geez, I knew a tech guy in college who fell while hanging lights or something. A big fall, and he broke his pelvis and some other serious damage. Really sad.
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Yeah, but– it shouldn’t be that way! It’s our responsibility to call attention to dangerous things or situations. The show Does Not Have To Go On. And theaters can be safe places if the people running them know what they’re doing and are trained in the proper use of those spaces and that equipment.
You SHOULD NOT fly a human being using ‘home made’ equipment from the hardware store; it takes the proper equipment to do it.
Curtains are heavy, but the pipe should be counter weighted properly. Or tied off securely.
Lights need safety cables and again, they need to be installed correctly in the first place.
Sorry, Joanne, you kinda hit a sore spot with me. I’m truly sorry about your college friend. I hope he recovered. And I hope someone made some changes so that didn’t happen to anyone again.
I’m all about safety. When I was younger I did just as many stupid things as the next guy or gal. I was lucky enough to survive them all even with the bum leg. And maybe that’s what has made me more careful.
It’s budget cuts and administration that doesn’t understand that gets us in trouble.
We all get to telling stories on here and I feel boring because I don’t have stories of the ‘stupid thing I did’… and I think ‘It can’t be that I didn’t do any. It must be I can’t remember them’. I do tend to think things all the way through before I start a project. And you can tell which projects I haven’t finished thinking about yet because those are the jobs I haven’t started! Ha! Ask my wife! 🙂 The plan goes only so far and then I hit that grey area I’m not so sure about and that’s where it sits… And I know if I just get in there and get going I’ll figure out the answer but boy, that’s a hard leap of faith, ya know?
Be careful out there everyone.
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I did a post on my blog called “Not the Fiscal Cliff.” I, as you would expect, got a nasty comment, which I did not allow. It is not a political comment. It’s about Silver Cliff. Some people just will reach.
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Clyde, thanks for telling us about a new posting on your blog. At this point I need to do some other things, but I plan on taking a look at it as soon as I catch up on what I need to do.
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I don’t plan to break dance even once this year.
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Or polka.
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I will not text while driving.
But then, I don’t have anything I can text with anyway.
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