Urgent Note to Readers: Do Not Engineer Your Own Demise!

Yesterday, I was catching up on some news, and I found a clip of Matt Lauer interviewing a boy who, on Saturday, July 29th at Newport Beach, dug a five foot hole only to have it cave in on him. While bystanders did manage to rescue the 13 year-old, he was buried alive for about five minutes and came out looking blue. Long story short: he could have died.

This interview has to be one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen. They started by explaining the situation and lost me at "five foot hole." Five foot hole? Five foot hole? You've got to be kidding me. I don't even want to imagine what my mother would have done to me if I had ever tried to dig five feet into the ground without permission. Wait, turns out his mother knew what he was doing. Apparently, she had advised him not to dig so deep because it is dangerous. But her son—a thirteen year old sans engineering degree—assured her that it was not, indeed, dangerous. He continuted digging. Again, I don't want to think of what my mother would have done to me if I had disregarded such a warning, but I assure you that being buried alive under five feet of sand would have been the least of my worries.

As I was watching this interview, I could only think "what is the purpose of this segment?" The mother indicated that you "shouldn't let your children convince you that something isn't dangerous." Um...duh! That's the point of parenting. Running with scissors is dangerous. Playing in the street is dangerous. Making your own fireworks is dangerous. If you're a parent, make sure your kids don't do these things! And, of course, the complete "moral" of the story is...and I am loathe to state this: don't dig a freakin' five foot hole at the beach. Don't dig a five foot hole for the hell of it. Honestly, people, I hope I've gotten the word out soon enough. I'll be making a round of calls tonight, but, if I don't hear from everyone, I'm calling out the lifeguards.