And Put Your Vest On

And so goes the cry from the parent to the child. Put your vest on. Have you got your coat? Why not take a sandwich with you? Be careful crossing the road, it’s always busy there.

Then, over the years, it changes slightly.

Be careful on the M62, it’ll be extra busy today. Have you got your coat (oh, perhaps that one stays the same). Have you got money? Have you got a map in your car? Here, take this sandwich (or perhaps the sandwich thing is just me).

“Be careful,” I say to them as they leave, “now what are you going to be?”

“Careful,” they reply obediently, sometimes. More often I get a cheery chorus of

“Dead.” Or “Dead in a ditch with our broken limbs sticking out at crazed angles.” Or “Dead in a pool of slowly congealing blood.”

They just do it to wind me up and because the young think they’re immortal. I have to say that Emily and Gareth are very good at letting me know that all is well, though: hence last night’s text message from Emily: “Concert was great. Going to club now. Alive” and the one later on to tell me that they remained alive and were now about to go to sleep on their friend’s living-room floor. It’s great that they do this and I know many young adults don’t so I’m grateful.

But this feeling of youthful immortality is why some young adults take risks: they take drugs, binge-drink, parachute-jump out of aeroplanes, bungee-jump, drive too fast, join the Army.

And when they get older, most of them stop doing all this and some of them even start playing bridge.

Well, I think it’s the wrong way round. Surely young people should know to keep themselves safe? They are needed to produce the next generation, for goodness’ sake!

It would surely make more sense, in evolutionary terms, if young people were the cautious ones. When we’re older it doesn’t matter so much. The roads should surely be choked with half-blind seventy-year-olds roaring along on motorbikes on their way to the hang-gliding club.

Some of the stupid things that some young people do are most definitely best avoided – racing each other along the motorway, for example. But it’s possible to be too cautious. And one thing about being older is hey, it’s now or never. Who cares what people think? If we care passionately about it, and have always wanted to do it, we should. Unless it’s murder. Or bridge.