We’re all very backwards when it comes to safety.

We see people get hurt doing something, and we say, “Well, I guess I should never do that.” But when people don’t get hurt, we don’t make that resolution.

But that’s silly. It’s all about playing the odds. Because in general, before you do anything that might be dangerous, you always ask, “What are the odds that something bad is going to happen?” And then, based on math, you either do it or you don’t. So following that logic, if you know that one out of every two people gets hurt doing something stupid, and you see someone else get hurt, doesn’t that actually make you safer? If you act fast enough, you can be the other 50 percent.

So we really should learn our lessons from the people who don’t get hurt. If they’re the other 50 percent, then we’re the first 50.

So today we’re going to discuss actual news stories where people were in scary situations but came out okay. And we should definitely learn our lessons from them. After all, if everyone else jumped off a roof, would you do it too?

Our first story today is about just that. Well, technically, it’s about kiddie pools, which, as it turns out, are extremely unsafe if you use them incorrectly.

Now don’t get me wrong. Swimming is very important. The Gemara says you’re supposed to teach your kids how to swim. But I don’t know if the Gemara meant kiddie pools.

Most of us don’t think of kiddie pools as dangerous. We tend to think of them as basically big puddles in which we cool our feet and yell at our kids to stop trekking in recently cut grass while they drink pool water out of toys they brought outside from the bathtub. The most dangerous thing we can imagine, as far as wading pools, is transferring absolutely all the air in our body into it to blow it up, and then having our children immediately jump on it and pop it while we keel over, the color of a tomato. Or getting a hernia from trying to pour out the water and grass clippings and turn our lawn into a swampland.

Enter a 53-year-old man in Colorado named Professor Splash, who is known as the only person in the world to have mastered the art of shallow-water diving. He’s jumped into kiddie pools from heights averaging between 30 and 80 feet up, and his most recent stunt—the one that earned him a world record—was diving 36 feet into 12 inches of water.

You have to wonder where he got his degree.

But that doesn’t mean you should do it too. Before his jumps, he does research, uses formulas and develops special techniques, most of which involve belly flopping (hence the name “Professor Splash”), though we’re pretty sure that, at some point toward the beginning of his career, he went in headfirst.

I’ve actually seen videos of his dives, and, science aside, every time he gets out of the pool, he seems pretty surprised that he’s still alive. But in 25 years, he’s broken his neck only like two times.

Now I don’t mean to put ideas in your head. On the surface, this may seem like a great idea, especially if you want to get into the lucrative field of high diving, but have only a kiddie pool and a roof. But below the surface, there are only 12 inches of water. So you should really only do it if you’re a professor of such things.

Diving Safety:

1. 1. Don’t try this at home. Have a friend try it.
2. 2. Do make sure your kids are out of the pool first.
3. 3. Don’t miss the pool.

Our next story today comes from a power company in Great Falls, Montana, who wanted to educate people on what gas smells like, so they could know when they have to call the gas company. So they put out some scratch-and-sniff cards, which they then gave out at safety fairs and women’s charity events. Maybe they stuck some in the mail with the gas bills, and then got panicked calls from their subscribers.

But eventually, according to spokespeople, the cards expired. I don’t know what happens when the cards expire. How much worse can they smell?

But unfortunately, they had a lot of them left over, because scratch-and-sniff cards that smell like gas leaks are not really something that people are clamoring to pick up. You smell it once at the fair, and you’re good.

So they put boxes and boxes of them out at the curb, and the garbage trucks picked them up. And then compressed them.

Fun fact: Apparently, compressing thousands of scratch-n-sniff cards has the same effect as scratching them all at once. And then, as the garbage truck obliviously drives through the town, the smell wafts into the open windows of all the office buildings, and the entire town panics, calls the gas company all at once and then evacuates onto the street.

Anyway, they no longer need cards in that town. Now they all know what gas smells like.

Gas Leak Safety:

1. 1. Don’t put all your rotten eggs in one basket.
2. 2. Do know what gas smells like.
3. 3. Don’t leap out the window of your office building and just hope for a kiddie pool.

By Mordechai Schmutter

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].