Your statistics Killed me.

A couple walks happily by the shore. They are young, and have their feet wet. By some mischievous sense of pleasure, having wet feet and getting them all full of sand is something nice to do, oh well. They are together, they are happy. They don't care that the sand is filthy and that the Jellyfish look like smoker's lungs coming back to life after being dumped into the sea. Holding hands and smiling, making dumb promises to each other, taking eternity as a joke..

- Are there any sharks here? - she asks.

- Not a chance - he replies, totally sure - Besides, I read that statistically it's more probable to be killed by a cow than by a shark.

- Ha! statistics kill me. - She laughs. Lets go of his hand and runs for a bit. She's very interested in a pointy seashell of pink and white stripes. As she bends over to pick it up, she can hear a very familiar voice that takes advantage of the posture and situation to tell her several "vulgarities". She can feel it. A shiver in the skin, an aura, goosebumps. "It is Love!", she thinks. A second later, as she can testify for her body telling her that her hair is a true symptom of love... lightning strikes and she blows into thousands of burning pieces. She dies alone, because her boyfriend was a bit far and he was left blind and deaf by the bolt for a few minutes. By the time he recovers consciousness, it is already too late: there's several people around, the beach convulses. Paramedics arrive, police, cameras...

Hundred of miles away, my wife reads the news. Now, checks the forecast, looks at the sky: It is a bit cloudy. She calls me. The chatter goes on for about an hour. Her basic idea is, we should not go out if it is raining a bit, from now on, lightning kills people. It does not matter that lightning killed people since Zeus ran around our mortal lands in diapers and poked ball-lightning out of his tiny nostrils with his fingers. The major worry is today, because it is on the news. The news invented the "death by lightning" today.

After we are done with the conversation, and considering that she was right several times before at many things and I've lost count of how many, I open Google and appeal into the second source of information and knowledge I have available since, as I already stated, the first one is clearly shocked (no pun intended).

Statistics say that approximately 25000 people a year die struck by lightning. Statistics, as we all know, do not lie. And if they do, we do not notice. I am no "mathematicianist", but 25k look like a high number.

I anguish. When I'm anguished I get cravings for food, so I sprint to the fridge and make me a sandwich .I would've told her to make one... But she's still shocked (neither of the two previous sentences had an intended pun). I'm about to lay a second layer of mayonnaise when another doubt strikes me. Run back to the PC, google. 7.2 million people per year die because of CHD (coronary heart disease). Goddammit, my wife never told me anything about this.

I give the sandwich a skeptic glance and leave it aside. Nerves take me, as a reflex act, to light up a cigarette. I don't even need to use my PC for this, it is printed at the pack itself: Lung cancer deaths ascend to over 1.3 million. I'm about to light it off, but I give it a last puff before that. Take it to the ashtray, before crushing it, one more drag, last one, OK... Now I'll crush it against the ashtray... As I bend my head close to the ashtray, taking THE last puff... I finally did it. I'm so proud of my force of will.

Why is it so hard to quit smoking? I think, distracted for a moment of the REAL threats that lurk in the world. "because it is addictive (duh!)" replies my inner voice; I don't slap myself because I still have some dignity left. I know that it is addictive, I am asking WHY, even knowing it is a death sentence, I cannot get it off my lifestyle. Take my phone, call one of my jack-of-all trades friends that have a similar profile to mine (studied a bunch of careers, but never finish any for some strange reason), "he knows about this things" and by that I mean he knows a bit of everything, with a psychology specialization. He tells me that there's a guy called Slovic; he's not Russian, he's Yankee; and that he is the president of the Society for Risk Analysis, some weird scientists that study the "why" I am not able to calm myself down. According to Slovic, people tend to judge the benefits and risks of any activity conditioned by the amount of pleasure they receive from it. More pleasure means: our perception of risk is lower or at least how we weight the consequences of the act is way lower than we should, sound simple if you put it that way: yet it sheds some light over the abyss that opens every time anyone lights a cigarette and says "one has to die of something".

He noticed that his explanation did not calm me down at all and offers me to visit him so that we may talk a bit more while we have some "mates", the noble beverage that has no nefarious consecuences if one has the basic motor skills to not poke one's eye with the "bombilla". I say "OK, I'm on my way" , and hang up. Lucky me, I've no car, deaths by traffic accidents are never under 1.2 million. I'll take a cab, and beg to Tyche that he's a real professional driver.

I already have my house's keys in the hand, another doubt strikes me. Phone; chrome, Google: "worse death" (keyword search ftw). I don't know, but tuberculosis looks ugly enough. It stashed 1.46 million deaths a year. It is just not healthy to go using public transportation with so many germs around, oh no sir, nope. Of course the search does not end there. Google is EVIL and is hiding from me unexplored terrain -that starts after page 2- the existence of Chauncey Starr.

(Necessary pause to think about Ringo).

I proceed: It turns out that this "Chauncey" discovered that we are very proud of our "free will" and that the risks we take look not-so-serious if we take them seriously (not to mention if they produce pleasure as the fake Russian Slovik stated). Translated, drink two mugs of beer, get on the car and step on the accelerator at a 20 miles/h max speed area is "child's play" if it is oneself who's driving. On the other hand, if it is the uncle Bob that drank a glass of wine during grandma's birthday before driving, we will probably panic.

Chauncey does not talk about an uncle, but about a nuclear disaster and how upset we would be if tomorrow a radiation leak converted our arms into tentacles (with the consequent inability to write complain notes, asking "why did the energy went out?") being an even totally out of our control. But technically I am not very sure about all this, I stopped researching. I am in fetal position on the couch very tempted to start sucking my thumb, trying to calculate what are the odds that statistics totally f*cked up our life or if, as a matter of fact, we love statistics and we are worried that they will hurt us in retribution for our loving. It starts raining. I do not fear lightning anymore. This certainty invades me, a major relief. I feel alive, yet, sedated. We all have to die of something.

All the previously used images are of my authory or under a CC0 license (Source: pixabay).

All the Images created by me possess a WTFPL licencing and they are free to redistribute, share, copy, paste, modify, sell, crop, paste, clone in whatever way you want, wherever you want. You can learn more about it HERE.