Two fire-breathing bartenders — Tegee Rogers, 33, and Justin Fedorchak, 39, — are the center of an interesting legal fight. The two men face up to 45 years in prison each for performing flaming bar tricks at Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern in Herndon, Virginia.The bartenders are popular attractions as they juggle bottles of alcohol and spit streams of flames. The act has been going on for over a decade, but the police arrested the men and charged them with three felonies and some misdemeanors, including manufacturing an explosive device, setting a fire capable of spreading, and burning or destroying a meeting house.
What fascinating about this particular story is that sounds both extremely cool, and potentially extremely dangerous, at the same time. This scenario may be the dividing line between safety and a fun, vibrant life. So often, the conduct is just incredibly foolish or egocentric as to be unworthy of defense. So often, the conduct just isn't sufficiently threatening to safety as to make it's regulation anything other than laughable.
For quite a while, I've been paying close attention to the issue of the dividing line between living and safety as discussed by The Advice Goddess, Amy Alkon, and her muse, Walter Olson. They've posted many stories of people doing the mundane stuff of a relatively normal life, only to have some official, whether governmentally authorized or by self-imposed title, put their offending conduct to rest. A story that makes the point particularly well:
I happened to arrive at snack time, when one of the ladies was asking for another cookie. 'No,' the attendant told her patiently. 'It's not good for you! You can't HAVE another cookie.'
Whereupon, big surprise, the woman asked for another cookie. And the cycle began again.
That incident came to mind when I read this fantastic article about the focus on safety, and sometimes ONLY safety, in caring for the elderly. It seemed to me, at the assisted living place, that if a woman has lost a lot of her mind and yet KNOWS she wants a cookie -- give her a cookie! If it shortens her life a little, so be it!
I've got no clue why the second cookie was such a killer, but I'll accept the premise that there was a good reason to refuse the request. So what? Having lived long enough to span the days when there were no such thing as seat belts to the day when 64 airbags were the norm, I've watched a trend toward safety take hold. And lose perspective.
Kids sometimes fall down and skin their knee. I did. Sometimes, they suffer tragedy and die. I didn't. There are risks out there that no child, nor elder, need endure. The risk/reward ratio clearly favors safety. But safety, taken to its logical extreme, would put everyone in a bubble, untouched and untouchable by anything that might conceivable cause harm.
This just isn't a life worth living. The arguments in favor of bubble-life are made by those who have suffered the harm, or their survivors. Whether it's a child who choked on a hotdog or drowned in a pool, they have the moral justification to demand that no other person endure what they've gone through. Any parent who has lost a child gains a moral prerogative, as no one should have to bury their child.
While acknowledging this right to argue their position, and feeling the same sympathy that any normal person would feel toward someone who has suffered so greatly, we need to maintain a level head about what can be reasonably accomplished in the name of safety without making life so devoid of flavor, activity and excitement as to be bubble-like.
One of our blindest spots is cars, the cause of death for about 50,000 people a year and disability for many, many more. We spent huge sums dealing with Homeland Security, knowing that the death toll at the WTC was about 3,000, and pay no attention to cars. Teaching two teenagers to drive, I'm painfully aware of what it means to put a two thousand pound death machine into the hands of children.
Rationally, I would never teach my kids to drive. I would never allow them in a car. It's like begging for trouble. But, of course, it would be impossible to live without cars, at least if we're to enjoy a normal life. The risk is clear, but so is the reward. Cars are much safer today than when I was first tossed into the back seat of a '57 Impala convertible with neither car seat nor seat belts, as well they should be.
A bartender spitting flames doesn't quite carry the same level of necessity as transportation. He makes for a very cook show, but it doesn't get you to work or school or the hospital. If anything, it's more like cruising to the Stewart's Root Beer stand for a float. Still, I can't imagine a life where my children would be unable to see anything cool, fun and exciting. It's part of what makes life worth living.
I don't want my kids to fall down and skin their knee, but I assume it's going to happen. I used to break bones all the time as a kid, and don't have a straight finger in the bunch. But I had a great time and wouldn't miss it for the world. My kids aren't nearly as wild and inclined to take stupid risks as I was, for which I'm eternally thankful. But I bite my tongue when they tell me what they're doing and where they're going, and tell them to have fun.
We need to come to the mutual realization that we cannot have a world where no one is hurt, where everyone is safe from the things that can harm them. Risk, harm, is omnipresent in a real life, and the only way to eliminate it is to eliminate a life worth living.
I propose that the 'bartender flambé' (Turley's phrase) be used as a rule of thumb, as the dividing line between acceptable risk and unacceptable risk. As for prosecuting the bartenders, rather than just telling the bar that it can't put on the show anymore because it crosses the line of safety, that's just absurd.
Copyright © 2010 Simple Justice NY LLC. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. The use of this feed on other websites is a copyright violation. If this feed is not in your RSS feed/news reader, the page you are viewing infringes the copyright"