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Is that what I thought then? Not that I would change a word of it, but it’s very different from what I had to say 14 years later, when again I addressed the subject of children and risk.
Obviously the men who died with Jessica made very stupid decisions. But someone has to grow up to be a test pilot. Someone has to grow up to be Picabo Street, hurtling down mountains while the rest of us wave flags.
Someone has to run the physical and intellectual risks that scare off everyone with a lick of sense about how great those risks are. Was it a failure of parenting that inspired Winston Churchill to assert, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result”?
Bravado is infuriating in the young, and when we think adults are encouraging it we want to wring their necks. Yet if we want our children safe we also want them bold. The little Jessicas lucky enough to grow up moral and in one piece and still scared of nothing may not be much like you or me. But they’re indispensable, and they have to come from somewhere.
Jessica Watson, 16, had just sailed around the world solo in a 34-foot yacht and been proclaimed a hero in her native Australia. I thought there might be another way of looking at her feat, and I consulted a high school classmate of mine, Webb Chiles, who has sailed around the world solo several times. Chiles shook his head at Jessica’s assertion, made at some point during her adventure, that “I understand the sea.” On his blog he predicted, “I expect that these attempts will continue with ever younger participants until one of them is killed, or, considering that they are closely monitored puppets on a string, gets into serious trouble and has to be rescued, at which time I believe the parents should be prosecuted for child abuse.”
