I am not sure who is the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I know it isn’t me. The other day I complained to my family about a fitness centre located next door to my house. I noticed that the members of the centre started gathering for their morning’s workout shortly after 6 a.m., which seemed to me a ridiculous hour, coming as it does exactly one hour after 5 a.m.
“Why do they even go there?” I asked at the supper table. “They all look in great shape, none of them seem to need it.” I thought my reasoning was airtight. My daughter replied, “They look that way because they go to the fitness centre, Dad.” Well, that thought hadn’t occurred to me.
On the other hand, I am not the dumbest guy on the planet. And maybe this guy isn’t either but he’s in the running for the title. The Florida man to whom I refer leaned in to kiss a rattlesnake the other day. The eastern diamondback snake, I guess, was resistant to the man’s romantic offer of a kiss on the lips and it bit the rattlesnake whisperer on the tongue. The man had to be air lifted to hospital.
I feel some sympathy for the man as no one appears to have gotten him to slow down long enough to advise him in the matter. I was fortunate to be raised better, and I say that without bragging. I do not know how many times my father told me not to kiss a rattlesnake on the lips. I’m not aware if there is anywhere else on a rattlesnake to safely plant a harmless buss but my Dad’s warnings sort of put me off rattlesnakes, at least as objects of potential romance.
I have not lived an exciting life but I also have picked up not even one rattlesnake bite along the way. Swallowed a few flying bugs by accident, but that’s about it. And I sure as heck didn’t kiss them as they flew between my too-open lips.
©2017 Jim Hagarty
