So there’s one dissimilarity to weigh against two similarities. The dissimilarity is apparently the result of local law (by the way, where else is there a running of the bulls event that might require such a law?), kind of like the one you break if you drive from New Hampshire into Maine with only the front-seat occupants wearing seat belts, or between other state lines with a child wearing a seat belt instead of being strapped into a child restraint.
Mr. Gomez exposed his son to an unnecessary risk, to a danger which kills about one person every ten years, because he felt that the experience was worth it. He took the risk with his son, holding his hand. And, like practically everyone else who participates in this admittedly idiosyncratic celebration, they emerged exhilarated and unscathed. Kind of like I do when I take the kid to a ball game and drive to it on a certain accident-heavy street and make it to the parking attendant without any loss of life. Except I’m afraid of bulls, and my son might well be too if he doesn’t meet anyone braver than me. Come to think of it, I grew up on a farm. I was expected to know my way around bulls, including how to run away from them. I didn’t grow up anywhere near Pamplona.
ETF, you’ve seized upon a story that would have gone unnoticed except for you and about a million other readers. The reason it would ordinarily go unnoticed is that all parents expose their children to various risks, uncalculated and unseen for the most part, yet exposed to the second-guessing of those who have attention undiverted by and judgment unclouded by knowledge of the immediate circumstances. My rule is to beware of those parents who claim to have never exposed their children to unnecessary risk ( they’ll be the ones out in front condemning those accused of it), because they are either blind or liars. I won’t hire Mr. Gomez as a babysitter, because my risk assessment is more conservative than his. But there’s nothing wrong with his idea of the relationship between father and son. You might consider that there might be something wrong with yours.
Did you look at the rest of the gallery in the OP’s link?
Of 15 photos, there were images of three separate gorings as well as some post goring/trampled guys. One almost made me faint because you can see the outline of a bull’s horn under the skin of the guy’s leg. Another shows a guy who is now “in serious condiition in hospital” getting a horn in the stomach then thrown to the ground. You see the bull go horns first into a crowd and then images of two other people post-goring aftermath.
So okay," one person dies every ten years"… But there were at least five people seriolsy injured in those photos! I would not want my kid to grow up missing a thigh muscle or having to be fed through a tube for the rest of his life. The injuries in those photos were horrific! But you’re right. Only one person dies every decade or so, so how bad can it be?..
Yup, I did, and it’s not for the faint of heart, especially for someone who just swallowed their cellphone. But it ain’t gonna impress the stout-hearted, neither…
Me neither, really, but is that the choice you’re facing? What kind of accident makes a person choose between femur and esophagus? Does the local high school have a bullfighting team?
How Bad can it be? Answer is, not very. No matter how much your imagination might torture you.
Mr. Gomez took his son on the equivalent of an amusement park ride, and someday his son might die, and wouldn’t it be nice if we could blame it on him? We can’t, though.
Being chased by angry, confused animals with gigantic horns is the equivalent of an amusement park ride? I’m not going on any amusement park rides any time soon…
They have runnings of the bulls in numerous towns across Spain and in southern France. Pamplona’s happens to be famous because Hemingway wrote about it.
I’m going to hell for giggling at that image, aren’t I?
Ah, so you’ve met my mother-in-law.
Did I ever tell you about the time Bill Brasky taught his son how to drive? He did it by entering him in the Indy 500. The kid wrecked and died. Brasky said it would’ve happened sometime.
Um, what part of
lead you to believe that the photos wouldn’t be gory (pun intended)? Or did you think that it was going be photos of bulls running around with bottles of bleach? IMHO, it’s a shame that the body count was so low.
Spain, for many of it’s merits has some weird celebrations involving animals. There is/was one where they threw a goat from a bell tower, for example.
Of course I knew it would be a bloody mess! (The outline of the horn in the guys leg made me queasy even though I usually have a high tolerance for gore.)
But King of Soup was making it sound like, “Oh, there’s a fatality only every ten years or so…” and that the safelty of the event is comparable to driving to a baseball game in bad weather.
My point was that just because fatalities aren’t as common, it by no means makes the bull run a reasonably “safe” event for a ten-year-old. This year there were 13 people hospitalized for goring or head injuries. This year, oops!, the bulls got separated, one charged a crowd, injuring eleven. In 2004 there were 28 runners taken to hospital.
Each run usually lasts only about 2 - 3 minutes.
That’s a helluva lot of injuries for a couple of sprints. You can’t tell me “Pshaw! There are barely any fatalities, it’s no different than taking my kid to a baseball game in bad traffic.” It would only be comparable if the baseball teams chased you with their bats when you got to the parking lot.
That’s probably why you, and not I, spent time viewing those images. I can’t stand that kind of stuff. Ever see Wheels of Tragedy, Signal30, or Highway of Agony? Man, anybody who’s ever seen those can’t possibly let their kid near an internal combustion engine or a square of flat asphalt or they’ve gotta be some kind of monster, right?
Parents the world over expose their children and allow their children to expose themselves to innumerable risks, for various reasons, and some of those risks are greater than others and some are more or less avoidable and some are connected to the local idea of personhood and sometimes the reasons why resonate more deeply with cultural or personal imperatives than others, and the only constant is there’s always somebody willing to make themselves feel good by criticizing someone else. So go ahead. But do it for the honest reason: because it reaffirms your own prejudices. Everybody understands that.
Okay. I think the guy’s a fucking idiot, and I feel better for having said so.
I’d pay real money to watch that!