Through many of my childhood years, a deep dread lurked in the back of my brain, prompted by Saturday afternoon movies and an assortment of adventure-oriented cartoons: a dread of wandering through the jungle, minding my own business, and falling into... quicksand.
What 9-year-old isn’t terrified of quicksand? For that matter, what 29-year-old or 49-year-old isn’t terrified of quicksand?
We’re all terrified of quicksand, because we’ve seen quicksand in action: appearing beneath one’s feet out in the wild, without warning – pulling us down, slowly down, inexorably down, into mooshy suffocation, our feet desperate for any purchase of substance that might stop our fatal descent; our eyes casting about for something, anything (preferably a sturdy vine) to grab onto so we can pull ourselves to the edge of the ravenous abyss!
So perilous is this universal danger that society begins preparing us to cope with it from an early age, serving up warnings across the media spectrum. For me, it began with Jonny Quest’s The Mummies of Malenque, followed briskly by Tarzan and oldies like Yellowneck and Burt Lancaster’s The Hallelujah Trail and Renoir’s Swamp Water. And Gilligan’s Island. The urgency did not abate for generations beyond mine, of course; they got their heads-up from The Smurfs and The Jungle Book and The Neverending Story.
And lest anyone wax dismissive over the genrefied nature of these examples, let’s remember that these dire warnings surfaced even in the classics: Lawrence of Arabia; The House of Frankenstein. The Princess Bride. Even in contemporary blockbusters, like Prey and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I took heed, yes I did, scanning the horizon for suspicious muddy surfaces that might hold imminent jeopardy. When opportunities spontaneously surfaced, I took advantage to train for the future: leaping, for instance, over broad mud puddles in the neighborhood part (impressive to my peers at 9; not so much, at 39).
The physical peril was not the only value in these early life lessons: I would learn in high school that quicksand is also a powerful metaphor, explaining fully in a single word the foray into Vietnam.
The thing is...
Growing up, and well into adulthood, I’ve been briefed on the dangers of quicksand, and I’ve been diligent in preparing for it. I still leap across mud puddles (but with less agility, at 60, than I enjoyed at 30). And, the thing is – I have yet to encounter one. I have never had to survive quicksand. I have never even seen quicksand.
Were all these warnings for naught? Was all my alertness and training in vain?
Would our society actually invest great effort, across time and many channels, trying to convince me of the threat and urgency of dangers I would never actually encounter? Are there those out there who would plow great energy into putting me on alert to menaces and hazards that won’t ever cross my path?
As I recently pondered this puzzle, I happened to visit family, who happened to have Fox News on. And I went home, found The House of Frankenstein online, and this time I chuckled dismissively as Boris Karloff sank to his doom.
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