
My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator - mellavora
http://www.outsideonline.com/1979226/once-more-lakemonster
======
iamthepieman
I took 4 of my kids up an embankment in the woods last year. We were out on a
nature walk, looking for cool rocks, fiddleheads and whatever caught our eye.
It started out mild enough. Looking at topo maps it was about 100 vertical
feet per 200 horizontal feet at first. But it gradually got steeper and by
about half way up I had to climb behind the younger ones with my hand on their
back to keep them from slipping down.

at the top we could see that it ended in a sheer cliff about 15 feet tall. I
knew that at the top of the cliff was a beautiful wild flower meadow because I
had been up there via another route earlier in the year.

We thought we saw a crack in the cliff that would allow us to shimmy up and
make the top so even though it was getting very steep (about 50-60 degree
slope) we pushed on.

The crack was too narrow though and when we turned around to go back down I
saw how crazy we were to have gone that far. I had the two oldest grab my
shoulders, sat the 5 year old behind me straddling my waist and put the
youngest between my legs and slid down on my butt.

the slide down was exhilarating and we vowed to return when everyone was a
little older and more capable.

I was genuinely scared for a brief moment when we turned around at the top but
I couldn't let my children know that and we all learned something about our
physical limits that day.

I think often about what to let my kids experience and what to protect them
from. I would rather let them explore their boundaries and get hurt when they
are young and I'm around to take care of them than for them to grow up afraid
of everything or even worse, not afraid of anything.

edit: found a map of the area[0]

[0] [http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g](http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g)

~~~
ZainRiz
The 5 year old wasn't the youngest?!? How young was he?

I'm shocked you managed to even get that high up with two kids younger than 6

~~~
iamthepieman
at the time, twin girls age 7, two boys ages 5 and 3. The 3 year old was and
still is more physically capable than the 5 year old though.

I could fill a journal with stories about the 3 year old.

------
kjhughes
What a witty, well-written story in the spirit of _50 Dangerous Things (You
Should Let Your Children Do)_ , albeit with a father-push rather than a child-
pull twist.

His description of how he'd be safe from the alligator following his father's
command to enter the water was hilarious:

    
    
      Immediately, I formulated a plan, which involved surrounding myself with a 
      protective cloud of urine.
    

And then later, with his own daughters:

    
    
      "If one of you gets eaten, we will name the boat after you," I said.
    

Good read. Recommended.

~~~
tajen
As a non-English native I didn't understand: Were there alligators in the
river? Were the kids afraid of their own imagination? Is there a double
meaning to the word "gator"? Thank you

~~~
smellf
There _were_ alligators in the river. He almost certainly imagined the gator
next to him in the water, but swimming in it was still very dangerous. Gator
has only one meaning.

The protective cloud of pee is just a joke. It's funny because pee is useless
to protect you from alligators. It's also funny because peeing yourself is
funny.

------
nathanb
I feel like this is the sort of thing that would be amazing and fulfilling
unless something ends up going wrong and you spend the rest of your life
dealing with crushing guilt.

The idea of having kids is terrifying, because there would be part of me that
wants to give them expanding and amazing experiences like this and part of me
that wants to protect them from anything terrible happening. I feel like the
only winning move is not to play.

~~~
codingdave
I understand that fear --

People sometimes don't understand why I say I am glad my daughter snapped her
collarbone. It is not that I want my children to ever get hurt. It is that, as
a parent, I've now been through it. I've had a child break. And she healed. So
now I take my kids out every weekend into the wilderness, knowing that we
might not come back unscathed, but we will come back, and their lives (and
mine) are better for it.

~~~
nathanb
How can you be confident that "we will come back"?

(Not trying to criticize your decision; just trying to understand it).

~~~
codingdave
Two main reasons:

1) I am actually very safety-conscious. I have been solo hiking in the
mountains and deserts for over 20 years. I know how to be safe, and how to
keep my kids safe.

2) I guess in all honesty, I don't know we will be safe. But you cannot let
fear drive your life, or else you will not live it.

------
js2
This is wonderful writing. I went to the University of Florida. Its
recreational lake[1] (where students canoe, water ski, swim, etc) is infested
with gators (the reptile kind, not the students, though there are lots of them
too). No matter how many times I was told no students had ever been attacked
there[2], swimming in that lake was still nerve-wracking.

[1] [http://www.recsports.ufl.edu/lake-
wauburg](http://www.recsports.ufl.edu/lake-wauburg)

[2]
[http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070614/SUNFRONT/7061403...](http://www.gainesville.com/article/20070614/SUNFRONT/706140336)

~~~
CapitalistCartr
There are three kinds of water in Florida. A body of water here has either
chlorine, salt, or gators in it. If you don't find the first two in it, it has
the third.

~~~
jonah
I dunno man, when I was young my aunt showed us pictures of gators in her
swimming pool.

~~~
logfromblammo
Give that gator a margarita, and it would have all three.

------
venomsnake
The olde times when kids were allowed to have childhood ... I think we see
once again effect of the hallowing of the middle here - you are either cuddled
and overprotected or have to mature too fast and too rough. No middle ground.

My dad tried to kill me with recoil of double barrel 12 gauge shotgun when I
was 5. He had to hold my whole body not to fall from the kick ...

------
mark_l_watson
Years ago I worked with someone whose father hunted/poached alligators in the
south for a living. My friend was made to go into the water to retrieve the
gators. I heard this story often enough that I 100% believe it. (My version of
this: my Dad had me every month clean the bottom of his large sailboat in San
Francisco Bay when I was a kid. The water was really cold, but no alligators
:-) And, I got SCUBA gear for doing the boat cleaning.)

------
balabaster
I hope my idiocy is immortalized by my kids like this.

------
grrface
When I was about 6, we would drive from New Orleans to the Pearl River to go
water skiing (or in my case, tubing). There are a handful of stories that get
told of my dad keeping one eye on us kids and one eye on the gator on the
banks in that river. This story brought a smile to my face.

------
fiatmoney
Called him Amos Moses.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDtNsIKOhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLDtNsIKOhs)

------
gonzo
Kids these days:
[http://i.imgur.com/gyn49gh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/gyn49gh.jpg)

Kids back then:
[http://i.imgur.com/ZYDIKGK.png](http://i.imgur.com/ZYDIKGK.png)

------
eellpp
what a refreshing read and what style.

I had to check out for the writer : Harrison Scott Key
[http://www.amazon.com/Harrison-Scott-
Key/e/B00NKZI2QG](http://www.amazon.com/Harrison-Scott-Key/e/B00NKZI2QG)

Surely on my reading list.

------
chris_wot
As an Australian, I'm a little horrified because although we don't have
alligators, we have crocodiles. And both are extremely territorial, aggressive
carnivores. We lose at least one person a year from attacks - this story could
have been far less amusing. And remember, we don't have Steve Irwin to wrestle
the bastards any more.

I refer you to Crocodile attack in Australia: an analysis of its incidence and
review of the pathology and management of crocodilian attacks in general. [1]

1\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16209470](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16209470)

------
Mc_Big_G
My Dad tried to kill me with a front-end loader and a ton of firewood.

~~~
SteveGerencser
Mine used to teach me chemistry and physics by doing things like putting
lighter fluid in my hand, lighting it and then saying go show your mom. If
even a tenth of the things we did as kids was done today I have to think CPS
would be involved.

------
tokai
My dad would often tell me "I'll beat you if you die" when I did something
like climbing trees too high. Great read.

------
robbrown451
Not exactly hacker news but so what. Awesome.

------
deltaecho1338
This deserves circulation on Father's day.

------
morpheous
Best title ever ...

------
daily_dose
This has a lot to do with computer science, great post!

------
murbard2
Yes it is well written and the style is light and refreshing, but am I the
only one who think this is horrific child abuse?

~~~
bmelton
I sincerely hope so, but I suspect not.

In the world I grew up in, I had to be home before the street lights came on.
I had to "check in" periodically, but otherwise, lived an unfettered
lifestyle. I was free to roam, and roam I did. My friends and I had a tree
fort we'd built in the woods, pieced together from scrap wood we'd found,
complete with a tire swing.

We swam in the streams, we biked full speed through wooded trails fraught with
potholes, tree roots, fallen branches.

We scoured the neighborhood in larger and larger radii, exploring til we found
danger, excitement, or boredom.

My daughter doesn't live in this world, and may never know it. My daughter
lives in a world where Child Protective Services can pick her up for being
seen without a parent. My daughter lives in a world where she can be detained
for walking to her grandmother's house alone. My daughter lives in a world
where building a tree fort could be construed as cause for arrest.

Maybe it's for the better. Maybe we should place safety above all else in our
children's lives. Maybe our parents should all have been removed, and each of
us would have been better cared for as wards of the state. I honestly don't
know, but I know that in exploration, curiosity was fostered. I know that in
roaming, I learned how to be self-sustaining; or at least as self-sustaining
as a child can be expected to be.

~~~
murbard2
Big difference between letting kids be free to do things and not coddling them
vs. using authority to push them to do things they are uncomfortable with or
afraid of.

~~~
bmelton
Perhaps, but at the same time, it falls incumbent upon the parent to push kids
into doing things they aren't comfortable with.

The incidents in the story, really, aren't much different from a parent
pushing their kids off on their first bike ride with no training wheels. Are
they going to fall? Maybe. Are they going to die? Definitely not.

Kids often have overblown senses of danger. Did the river have alligators?
Maybe, maybe not (I checked though, it does), but kids are often imagining
dangers that aren't there. Old Lady Crenshaw isn't really a witch, and her
house isn't really haunted, and Old Man Cratchett isn't likely to shoot
trespassing children on sight.

My family frequently goes to Hawaii, and while it literally took weeks to
convince my child that yeah, there are sharks in the ocean, but it's still
safer than the car ride TO the beach. I don't feel even slightly guilty for
trading out her fear of sharks for the wonderment that is the ocean. We
discussed how to deal with sharks, what to do if we encounter one, blah blah
blah, but at least to me, "avoiding the whole ocean forever" was not a valid
way to deal with that fear.

~~~
jimmaswell
>Are they going to die? Definitely not.

Do you think alligators can't kill you?

~~~
bmelton
I think that I'm deferring to the judgement of the father, and not the
unreliable narrator, who expressly confesses that there might not have been
any alligators around whatsoever.

Regardless, even though you quoted out of context, it's perhaps worth
backpeddling a bit, because even though I stated that they're definitely not
going to die _while riding a bike_ , even that is an overstatement. It's
clearly not impossible to die on one's maiden bike ride, though it is still
very, very unlikely.

~~~
jimmaswell
The bicycle was an analogy for diving into the water, wasn't it? I read it as
it being said that in both cases you definitely won't die.

~~~
bmelton
It was, but more importantly, a kid riding their bike for the first time
without training wheels can be a terrifying experience, because their brains
(as well as ours) aren't very good at risk assessment.

Pushing a kid on a bike without training wheels for the first time could very
easily be interpreted as attempted murder by a precocious child. That doesn't
mean that their fears are rational. Swimming in a river has a non-zero chance
of alligator attack, statistically, alligator attacks are very, very rare, and
you're far more likely to die of regular old drowning than by alligator.

------
shiggerino
Americans have a weird concept of safety.

Most of them won't let their kids out of the house alone because of "stranger
danger", but put them in charge of giant crude oil or passenger trains and
they are sure to fuck up spectacularly on a regular basis.

