I never thought I’d have to ice fish for food
By Jess Brownell
There’s a game I play with a friend of mine who, like me, is aging and relatively sedentary. We call it Ways We’re Not Going to Die. Falling off a roller coaster (or for that matter, a horse) is on the list, for example. So is wind-surfing and parachute failure while sky-diving. Driving your pick-up out on a supposedly frozen lake to your ice-fishing shack and breaking through the ice and drowning, perhaps along with members of your immediate family (it happens in Wisconsin, annually) is there. Being mauled to death by your pet chimpanzee is a recent addition.
That this passes with us for light-hearted entertainment probably says more about what our lives have come to than decent, God-fearing people need to know, but I bring it up because the board game of life is showing signs of becoming even more complicated. The points we’ve accumulated over the years by avoiding the kinds of perils mentioned above may not be enough to save us from some equally humiliating demise.