Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:53:10 GMT

Some of you know this story, some of you don't. It offers a valuable life lesson (for me anyway), so I will share it again here.

I was very young, perhaps 4 or 5 years old and my parents took the family to Walt Disney World. What a great adventure! My sister (2 yrs my senior) and I were having the time of our lives. We decided to go on the ride "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" (for those of you that have never been on this ride, you sit in a little car, a safety bar goes down over you, and the car takes you through the ride where you encounter lots of "near misses" with trouble along the way. I don't remember most of them, but there is a scary witch, you head straight for a wall that opens up when you get to it, etc... Definitely a ride for kids).
I sat in the little car with my sister averting one danger after another, and I remember being pretty scared by what now seems like silly pranks. We came close to the end of the ride.....
Suddenly the little car stopped.....there was a bright light ahead that came closer, you could hear the sound of an approaching train....I could take no more....we were about to be run over by a train....this one was for real....In my panic I ducked down....of course, the little car moved along "just in time". Whew, but I felt this intense pain, and blood was dripping down my face. Sure enough, I had broken my nose on the safety bar when I ducked down from the "train" in my terror.

The lesson for me here,(and I have to remember it often) is that I frequently anticipate disaster, that has not actually manifested itself, and do something to evade it, ending up doing more harm than good. The perceived "disaster" never actually comes, and I am left sitting there with the consequences of my behavior with no real reason for doing whatever it is that I have done.

I break my nose on the safety bar all over again.

So the next time you see a train coming, make sure it isn't just a light and a recorded noise...take the time to be sure there really is a train before you take drastic action. It is worth the extra second to make sure exactly what you are dealing with. Don't end up with consequences for "dealing with" something that was never actually there. Terrorizing yourself over something that never comes to be. Often warning signs are just that, warning signs and the actual disaster never comes. Don't ignore the signs, just don't overreact to them. Often times the red flags are there so that we can avoid the actual tragedy. Treat them as such. They, themselves, are not a tragedy.

My words of wisdom for the day....and if you got a giggle out of it as well, don't feel guilty, this story makes me giggle a bit now to. Just don't lose the message.

note** The above story actually happened. I really am that gullible

Animal

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 02:53:41 GMT

View Poll: animal

1st time around

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:14:37 GMT

Well, I have finally started a blog thing. I never thought I would, but peer pressure finally won out. Not much time to write now, but I will get back to this later. Hopefully this will be a good thing...who knows, I may even come to like it....

~M

Masikas-Place

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Animal

1st time around