Risk Assessments

The risks of getting out of bed:

• Falling and breaking my hip
• Having cold feet because I can’t find my slippers
• Someone may actually want me to do something before I have my second cup of coffee
• Running out of coffee before I get my second cup
• Being forced to put on a bra and get dressed before noon

The risks of stopping to talk to my neighbour:

• He will tell me all about his sex life
• He will rub my arm…..again…..with his sweaty hand
• His wife will come out to chat
• I’ll have to pretend interest in their medical problems

The risks of road trips:

• I will have to pee/poop and there isn’t a washroom for 500 miles/ 804.672 km and I’ll have to squat in a ditch with no cover and The Viking will have to hold his coat in front of me so I can retain my dignity
• The battery in my iPhone will die and I’ll be forced to listen to the AC/DC channel on Sirius for 18 hours because that’s what The Viking considers music
• We won’t be able to find a hotel room and we’ll be forced to sleep in the truck, which will make me a quadriplegic
• We will be stopped for a speeding violation by an elected Sheriff and end up in prison in Montana
• We will run out of gas and have to walk 379 miles / 609.941 km through sweltering heat with no water. I’ll have to take off my shirt and wrap it around my head but then my boobs get sunburned and I’ll lose my shoes somewhere without noticing because that’s what everyone lost in the desert does
• We will run out of snacks

The risks of going to a theatre to watch a movie:

• We end up in the Popcorn line behind a woman/man with 19 children who all want something different
• The theatre is full and we have to sit in the front row with our head way back to see the screen and it gets stuck that way which makes driving home almost impossible
• Someone keeps farting through the whole movie and it’s not us
• The seats are those cheap ones that turn us into quadriplegics
• The movie is horrible and we just blew almost a hundred bucks!
• An asshole keeps kicking our seats so I have to punch them in the throat and end up in jail and The Viking has to bail me out

The risks of going out for dinner:

• We can’t find a restaurant we can get into without waiting for an hour so end up at KFC for take-out
• We get into the restaurant but the service is so slow we die of starvation and they throw us in the dumpster in the back
• We get in, get service but the food is godawful so we go home hungry….or…. end up at KFC for take-out
• The bathrooms are really gross and now we can’t trust any food they put in front of us
• The bill is so large we end up doing dishes for 6 hours

The risks of going to Wal-Mart:

• We have to park 6 miles / 9.65606 km away from the store and die of exertion before we reach the actual store
• We get into the store but there isn’t any carts left so The Viking has to carry it all himself
• We get into the store and get a cart but there are so many people we can’t get beyond the food section
• We get stuck behind a family reunion in the cereal aisle while another reunion erupts behinds us so we can’t move until the store is closing
• A kid mows us over with a shopping cart while its adult is comparing the price between two kinds of mustard
• The Viking finds another TV we need to get so we can’t eat for the next 4 months

The risks of not doing risk assessments:

• I won’t be prepared when an earthquake happens, or a tsunami is hurtling toward us, or a woman gives birth in the taxi in front of us, or a super snowstorm strands us and I don’t have enough food for ourselves and everyone else on the block so we all starve to death, or an explosion happens and I forget my fire extinguisher and an entire city burns to the ground.

Some people may think the odds are pretty good that these things won’t happen but that’s a risk I’m just not willing to take.