Nonfiction Blogpost

If showers could kill!  "That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer" is an essay in the New York Times  by Jared Diamond about risk taking in life.  Who knew that I could have slipped and seriously hurt myself about 4 times by now (I'm 13) just by taking a shower?  If you have a 1/1000 chance that you will fall in the shower and you reached your 1000th shower,  It would take less than around 2.75 years to die.   Falling down is a big problem for elderly people.  It's one of the main contributors to death in elderly people.  Jared Diamond, the author needs to be careful because he is 75.  

Jared worked in the fields in New Guinea for a while when he was younger.  He and his New Guinea friends took a trip into a forest where they would set up their tents.  His friends refused to sleep under a big tree because it had a risk of falling on them because it was dead.  At first he thought that a tree falling on them was unrealistic.  Later he realized that since every night he heard a tree fall, that tree could fall on him.  He developed a sense of "constructive paranoia" for things which make sense to be afraid of.  We need to stop freaking out about burglars which we rarely encounter.  How many times do you encounter a burglar?  How many times do you take a shower?  You have more chances to slip in the bathroom than to be hurt by a burglar.  Instead, we should be more cautious about the hazard that showers and everyday things can create. 

We tend to overreact about things that aren't much of a potential threat while we underestimate the real dangers.   According to Jared Diamond, "my wife was nearly killed by a falling tree last year" (Diamond p2).  Who would have thought that a tree was a culprit?  Also, studies have shown that people "exaggerate the risks of events that are beyond our control, that cause many deaths at once or that kill in spectacular ways" while "we underestimate the risks of events we can control ("That wouldn't happen to me- I'm careful") and of events that kill just one person in in a mundane way" (Diamond p2).  You never hear about things like bathroom casualties on the news.  We need to be more careful about small things like putting our seatbelt on or crossing the street.  It makes the difference.   

Just because I read this article doesn't mean I'm never taking a shower again.  I'm just going to be more careful and not drip soap all over the shower floor.  As Jared sad, it's important to not let your carefulness limit you.  Do whatever you want, just think about it before you do it.        

Work Cited

Diamond, Jared. "That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer." Essay. The New York Times. The   New York Times, 28 Jan. 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.