Will You Die in Quicksand today?

I was a sheltered child.

image from www.createbrand.ru

I carried an umbrella inside a lean-to, within a bomb shelter, surrounded by a castle fortress, guarded by a moat filled with ravenous alligators, and I had the Sword of the Lord by my side.

I was carefully sheltered from racy television shows such as Happy Days and the Dick van Dyke show. Of course, we watched Emergency! religiously every week so my off-the-charts fear levels were amped up every week, 500cc of wringers lactate notwithstanding.  It is a wonder I made it out of childhood intact in any way, shape, or form.

The natural world was also presented as a terrifying place. Fish bones could easily choke and kill you. Creeks contain holes you can inadvertently step in and instantly drown. And everybody said there was quicksand in the creek next to my house.

(Apparently the 60s was a decade when there was a popular tv trope wherein people would sink in quicksand. The more they struggled, the deeper they sank.)

In spite of all this sheltering, somehow, under my umbrella, in my lean-to, in the bomb shelter, in the fortress, behind the line of hungry hungry alligators, with Sword of the Lord at my side, I saw a depiction of this deadly quicksand on some tv movie.

image from jameskennedy.ie

OMFG. Poor siouxsie.

Turns out, fish can be eaten fairly easily without causing death. Holes in creeks are almost never large enough or deep enough to swallow you whole and kill you. Happy Days and the Dick van Dyke show weren't quite as bad as I was led to believe, and quicksand? I laughed this morning when I read about it on Wikipedia.

Quicksand's not even dangerous.

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