An abundance of caution: Alison Healy on taking risks

I blame Covid-19 for my trip to the emergency department. Giddy with excitement at the prospect of socialising again, I missed my footing in the pub and fell flat on my face in front of a small crowd.

If you are a naturally cautious person, the emergency department is an alien environment to find yourself in. We naturally cautious people seldom trouble the emergency services due to our reluctance to dive-bomb into pools or recklessly slide on a wooden floor in our socks.

But where does this natural caution stem from? I’ll wager we were exposed to cautionary tales in our childhood. The Slovenly Betsy story book is a good example of the genre. Heinrich Hoffmann’s cautionary tales might be aimed at children, but they contain more horror than any Halloween franchise. Generations of children have been scarred by Slovenly Betsy since its US release in 1911.

One Slovenly Betty story tells the tale of Phoebe Ann, a haughty child who walks around with her nose in the air. Well, she gets her comeuppance. Her neck grows so long that she is reduced to wheeling her head around in a cart. The book has a helpful illustration of the girl pushing the cart around and all I can say is, good luck rocking your child to sleep after seeing that picture.

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Or what about The Cry-Baby, the story of the girl who cries so much that her eyeballs fall out of their sockets, and she has to blindly feel around for them on the ground? The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches involves our heroine playing with matches. Even a three-year-old can predict that this will not end well. Her clothes go on fire, and she burns to death, leaving only her scarlet shoes behind.

While all the girls are punished in one way or another, Polly is the most put-upon. Her only crime is to play with boys. “Little girls should never be all in a heat and flurry,” she is reprimanded but she ignores the advice and romps around the playground. She must be as fragile as a china doll, for her leg breaks off. There’s a useful illustration for children who cannot picture the scene. Her horrified brother is carrying around half a leg which is dripping in blood. Polly hobbles around on crutches and eventually dies, probably still wondering why her brother was running around with her bloody leg.

I too hobbled around on crutches after my undignified fall but happily my leg did not snap off. That incident made me even more cautious than ever, and I now approach steps as if I am descending Mount Everest. You may scoff at naturally cautious folk but be grateful. We don’t clog up hospitals – normally – and we don’t send insurance premiums rocketing with our risky behaviour. And if you were having brain surgery, wouldn’t you prefer one of us rather than the flamboyant risk taker who was swinging from a chandelier at a wedding he had crashed hours earlier?

Perhaps you are unsure if you are a risk-taker or a naturally cautious citizen? Fear not, I have devised a series of simple tests to help. Firstly, imagine you are getting into your car when you are told that an axe murderer is approaching. Do you still pause to fasten your seatbelt and check your mirrors? Well done, you have passed the first step.

Now you are asked to bet as much as you like on a horse race. If you place a bet of €5 or less, while fretting that you are on a slippery slope to becoming a gambler, then you have moved to the third test.

In this test, your car is parked slightly over a white line in a car park. Do you re-park it within the lines, even if it takes seven attempts? You know you do.

Continue to the kitchen where you are presented with a recipe which calls for 450g of butter. There is 454g in the packet. Do you carefully remove the 4g because you always follow a recipe to the nth degree? If you do, then you are presented with the final test. You are handed a basket of groceries and told to go to the self-service queue. But lo, there are 13 items in your basket. The sign says 12 items or fewer. Do you leave the queue and join the much larger one, because rules are rules? Why, yes you do.

Congratulations! You have passed all the tests. Celebrate, but don’t throw caution to the wind. It might fly back and hit you in the face. You might even lose an eye.