Our Brother's Keeper
Our brother’s keeper
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
A FEW YEARS AGO, WHILE DOING MY PEriodic cruise of record shops in search of blues CDs I don’t already have but should (Little Walter: The Intentionally Lost Chess Sessions), I ran into an old college acquaintance on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. He asked what I’d been doing and I told him I’d just come back from the Oshkosh Fly-In.
“When are they going to shut that thing down?” he asked, blithely.
I looked at him and blinked. “Shut it down? Why would they shut it down? It’s the biggest, most popular fly-in in the world...”
“Well, I see they killed four more people this year. The thing’s gotten too big.”
Maybe it was the indiscriminate use y of the word “they.” Maybe it was the whole attitude, or the three cups of double espresso I’d just had at Victor Allen’s coffee bar while vainly searching for a cheap Vincent in the new Hemmings. Whatever it was, I felt my blood pressure rising, adrenaline kicking in.
“Are you a private pilot?” I asked.
“No,” he said quickly.
“Well then what do you care if four more people got killed flying into Oshkosh? You weren’t even there. Thousands of people fly in every year, and they love doing it. Sometimes there are a couple of accidents, but you'd have more fatalities if the same number of people drove their cars to a football game. Or stayed home and took a shower.”
He shrugged and said, “Well, I see your point. Seems like a dangerous event, though.”
Through the miracle of subject change, we parted amicably, neither of us probably convinced of the other’s wisdom. In any case, my friend had walked into it; he’d hit one of my few (okay, multitudinous) hot buttons.
All my life I have observed with interest and amazement the general human need to eliminate pleasurable risk in the lives of others whose diversions we do not share. The first time I noticed it was in school. The subject was football.
Every time a kid got injured in a game there was a general outcry to ban high school football. The outcry, of course, never came from football coaches, players, cheerleaders, managers, fans or parents who loved the game. It came from people who had never played football and didn’t care to watch.
All through grade school, I was worried the game would be eliminated before I had a chance to play. Never mind that I eventually turned out to be a perfectly mediocre football player. At least I was given the opportunity to try.
In my lifetime I’ve seen the same pressures brought upon boxing, mountain climbing, auto racing and dozens of other activities. In some cases these sports have gotten out of hand and reform has been needed to keep them civilized (we can’t be feeding Christians to lions just because it sells tickets, I suppose), but all these risky pastimes have fortunately sidestepped extinction through reasonable compromise.
I don’t need to tell you that motorcycling is among those sports over which non-participants constantly agonize. We’ve had many public suggestions over the years (some from our own transportation officials, such as the redoubtable Joan Claybrook) that motorcycling should be eliminated entirely. Veteran riders of the Fifties’ anti -Wild One hysteria tell me we have no idea how close we came to being swept off the road forever.
None of this lively opinion or pending legislation-need I mention-ever comes from anyone who ever threw a leg over a motorcycle. Strangely, we have some of this same conflict right within the bounds of our own sport. Almost every year some racing insider opines that the Isle of Man TT should be eliminated because it’s too dangerous. While I feel it should not be a required World Championship event-no one should be forced to ride there to keep a job-I don’t see why willing and brave riders should not be allowed to compete in the last honest-to-God roadrace on Earth.
Once again, criticism of this event seldom comes from the people who still ride it, the dedicated organizers or the thousands of fans who love to attend. Condemnation always comes from afar. My standing advice to those who don’t like the TT is that they should stay home. Don’t go.
Helmets are another battlefield, both outside of and within our sport.
Those who would not ride to the corner mailbox without a helmet seem to spend a great deal of time worrying about riders who would.
My own take on this complicated question is (a) I almost always wear a helmet; (b) new riders should be required to wear them during their vulnerable novice years, largely because it removes economic and peer pressure not to; and (c) if consenting adults want to ride to Sturgis with their hair flying in the wind, more power to ’em.
Yes, I know. The old social cost argument: The rest of us have to pay for their medical care. Swell. Let’s get rid of everything with a social cost: football, rock concerts, skydiving, boating, sex, airplanes, racing, bathtubs, cars, electricity, uphill golf fairways, snow shoveling, Christmas tree lights and Fettuccine Alfredo-yes, the dreaded “heart attack on a plate.”
The bad news, friends, is that nearly all of us are going to get sick and die. Or fall down or crash into something. Gravity always wins.
I know. I am 48 years old, and I would guess at least 65 percent of the people who were on this planet when I was born are now gone. And of those once-teeming millions, only a very few died at Oshkosh, the Isle of Man or on the road to Sturgis.
Some people enjoyed these things a lot when they were alive. Others didn’t, but that’s no concern of mine. □
