Risk Taking:

O.K., well, you asked for it. I think my old man was ADD. It actually was quite a scary childhood. He was a major risk taker. But the stories can be amusing.
He probably died because of his ADD taking down four of his best friends with him. He was only 44. well, here's a story for you. promise it's true.

Sometime in the late fifties my parents went on a trip around the world with several other couples. Part of the trip included a safari in India to shoot tigers. They stopped in Paris on the way to India. One night at the one of Paris' famous nightclubs(Maxim's), my father was in a conversation about riding elephants in India. They were going to be hunting from the elephants.

He was told that it was very difficult to ride on an elephants back. Well, not for my dad!!!! He boasted running away as a lad and joining the circus. Said he knew all about riding an elephant. Then he has the waiters pile three tables on top of each other in the middle of the night club. On top there was a chair. He climbed up, sat on the chair and started to rock back and forth, pretending to be on an elephant. He told me later that he planned the fall from his experiences in the circus. Well, he ended up breaking his leg very, very badly. Would probably eventually have had to have it amputated. But the story is true guys.

He used to play polo and ski with a brace on after that. Actually , we used to fly up to Vt. every weekend to ski, then on sat afternoon he used to fly back to New York City to play polo, then fly back to Vt. to ski on Sunday!!!!! He used to drive the car at a hundred miles an hour packed with kids etc. This guy was on over drive. He died landing on a closed air strip in a canyon. His son had flown in on an earlier plane. He told all the people on this hunting trip, his trip, that if they overshot the runway,that that was the ball game. Well they over shot it and had to keep flying for several more minutes before they hit a canyon wall. I suppose maybe he was AAHD? what do you think?

He and his brothers used to play cowboys and Indians with real shot guns, he had lead pellets going up his legs!!!! Oh well. All I can say is that I'm glad my kids are not like this. But I think you can see that this does run in my family, this kind of reckless behavior. It is very scary. At my cousins recent funeral, my female cousins and my sister and I talked about how so many of the cousins have this death trip problem. But, now at least I think I know what this is about, and that's why I'm on this list.

In some ways I am a risk taker, also. I drive fast, and I do some other things that are risky. But, nothing like what I have just described. Anyone else have a parent who used to go lion hunting with a pole and a rope? We used to have lions and seals on our property in Conn.!!!!!! Needless to say the neighbors were not pleased!!! I know this was long, but you have got to admit, interesting, kisses all, kik

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If you would like to post a response to this here, please e-mail the response to me with the subject line: "kik's dad"

(Although I fight fiercely for the right of people to say what they want to . . . this is my website and I retain the right to not post something that I don't want to (for whatever reason or no reason whatsoever. One reason can be that I am operating using free space provided by my ISP and that space is limited.)

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