I have often said that had I been Rick Blaine in the movie Casablanca, I would have arranged to have Major Strasser send that Commie rat Viktor Laszlo off to a concentration camp, then spent the rest of the war in Casablanca making boatloads of money from the bar and lots of babies with Ilsa.
I grant you that in my scenario above, Casablanca would have been somewhat different from the version as released, but that’s just me. Others, however, are drawn to adventure, like this fool who is currently climbing Mt. Everest:
His name is Ben Fogle and he is an “adventurer”, which is all well and good while you’re a single young man with no responsibilities (which is why his counterparts in, say, the Marine Corps are considered expendable).
But Fogle leaves this behind to go on his adrenaline-junkie escapades:
It’s not just the fact that Marina Fogle is drop-dead lovely (which she is), but there are children involved. So when Daddy plunges to his death / gets eaten by a shark / dies of some hideous disease in a poxy jungle in some shithole country, these beautiful kids will have to come to terms with the fact that their Daddy thought that his adventures were more important than they were (which he clearly does).
Frankly, were I Mrs. Fogle, I’d ditch her selfish husband and hook up with someone more responsible. He wouldn’t have to be an accountant or lawyer or some equally-dreadful nebbish, just someone with a greater sense of familial duty than her existing husband. That she doesn’t do this makes her a better person than he is.
Nevertheless, Fogle will doubtless meet a pointless death like that Aussie idiot who was always playing with dangerous animals, and Mrs. Fogle can get on with her life. It’s just too bad that the kids have to suffer along the way.
The thing, to me, about adventure is that there are degrees of excitement and degrees of risk. Some people get off on roller coasters (never understood the attraction personally) where there’s an appearance of risk but in reality you’re pretty safe unless something catastrophically fails, and you have the same “unless” driving at highway speeds from point A to point B.
Things like climbing Everest though, you can do everything right, have all the right precautions, and if Mother Nature decides to make you her bitch you end up as one of the many landmarks on the mountain. You give up too large a degree of control over your destiny. So if he wanted to go to Yosemite and tackle El Capitan he’d be likely to make it home in one piece. Everest is for single, childless people or people with grown children.
Then again, I’ve never been an adrenaline junky, I much prefer my life to be calm.
He makes lots of money from doing his thing.
In other words, she needs a man like you!!!!!
Oh gawd, I get the nervous hives just thinking about it. Maybe twenty years ago…
Man is looking for the marbles he lost, not realizing where he left them.
Excitement is just a short hand expression for this will not end well.
I wonder if his on-the-edge lifestyle is a turn-on for her; the chance he may never return from one of his adventures might just stoke her fire down below. If so, a less dangerous occupation would likely end in divorce.