I was reading about that poor woman who got killed by a sting ray in Florida. THAT is some crazy shit. Judy Kay Zigorski of Pigeon Mich., was sitting on the front of a boat going 25 miles an hour when a 75 pound sting ray flies up out of the water and hits her in the face, killing her. What are the odds? They said she probably died from the impact. My heart goes out to her family but it was CLEARLY her time to die. I don’t mean that in a morbid way but she wasn’t base jumping. She was sitting on the front of a boat on a leisurely cruise. What a random accident.

The weird thing is that this happened in the Forida keys where something similar happened back in ‘92. A woman was sunning on the deck of her small boat when a barracuda jumped out of the water and landed on top of her. It thrashed around, leaving her with 121 stitches. WOW!

And don’t forget the man who was killed by a tiger at a zoo in San Francisco. That has to be the scariest thing to ever happen to someone. You know that watching a 350 pound tiger turn the corner and head straight for you is something that probably doesn’t compute as “possible things that could happen today”.

So what can you say when something as random as that happens to you?

“Why me?”

Because God hates you.

“This shouldn’t have happened to me!”

Yes it should have. If you got attacked by a barracuda INSIDE your boat then God is mad at you and is punishing you for some fucked up shit that you did in your life. How else can you explain it? A barracuda jumping out of the sea with the sole purpose of attacking you is the equivilent of winning the lottery…and you won! No one else but you. The same holds true for getting mauled by a tiger on Christmas day. That is not your average bad luck. “Remember the Christmas when Billy was eaten by that tiger? Crazy shit. Right?”

That has to be one of those moments that, providing you live, changes your perspective a bit. Life really is random. It’s how you deal with what is thrown at you that defines who you are.

I guess no one can honestly predict how you’d act in a crisis situation. The man who got mauled by the tiger had two brothers with him. One of them actually tried to save him and got mauled as well, though he lived. He’s got some big balls. I love my brother dearly but in the face of a 350 pound carnivore, I’d be hiding under a car screaming “I’m gonna miss you bro!”

Remember a couple years ago, the man that fought a shark in Florida to save his neice? She lost her arm and he wrestled the shark onto the shore and got it back. Talk about balls. That man should be fed grapes and have his cock sucked. That is a real man.

I would like to imagine that I would do the right thing. You know, chin up and get in the mix. Or piss myself and cry like an eight year old girl. I don’t know.

Once, in Alabama, I was swimming in an inlet of Lake Eufala. It was early in the morning and all was quiet. Suddenly I heard people screaming. I looked up, treading water. It was a family of people on a small dock screaming at ME to get out of the water. “Why?” I asked. “GATOR!” they screamed back at me. Right behind me was an alligator that had been following me. I swam faster than Michael Phelps to get out of the water. At one point, I actually levitated. On the dock, I acted cool on the outside but inside I really WAS screaming like an eight year old girl. I just didn’t want to look like a pussy, which is what I was. The grandfather of this clan of good sumaritans looked me up and down and proceeded to tell me that the gator took down the neighbors Labrador Retreiver the day before and “I’d hate to see you get pulled under ’cause you don’t look like no Tarzan.” Maybe not.

I didn’t get attacked that day but it made me ask “What if?”

I guess the lesson is that you don’t know what tomorrow brings. Live your life as hard as you can because you never know when God will throw a 75 pound stingray at your head.

Filed under: Can I just say:, Richard's Posts, alligator, attack, barracuda, christmas, death, God, kill, mauled, scare, Stingray, stitches, swimming, Tarzan, tiger, wild