The day before our visit to the Cliffs of Moher, I chuckled about a sentence I read in our now well-worn, 2018 Rick Steves travel guide. Our buddy Rick was cautioning us, using humor to suggest that we stay behind the recently-installed protective walls along the paths at the Cliffs of Moher tourist attraction.
For years, the Irish didn't believe in safety fences, just natural selection. -Rick Steves
Now, I know it's really not funny at all - tragic accidents have occurred - one as recently as January of this year. Keep in mind, the Cliffs are 650-700 feet tall in some spots, and the slippery grass covers uneven terrain. And there is wind to contend with when you're up that high.
Sure enough, two young women (not William & Mary students) and their selfie stick were over the barrier taking photos. It was morning, the grass was damp. It was windy and they had on long blue ponchos, an unwanted advantage for a gust of wind. And, let me be clear, we couldn't see the Cliffs that day - it was too damn cloudy.
So, does the cliche,"She died doing what she loved." apply to selfies? Certainly not on a cloudy day.
We all watched in disbelief. Should we say something? (We certainly didn't want to startle them.) Should we just go about our business and enjoy the day? (Several of us had to walk away; it was just too stressful to watch.)
Enter a calm, rational William & Mary student. He stood at the barrier wall and said in a quiet, factual way, "You might want to get down from there. It's slippery and the wind is picking up. I wouldn't do that if I were you." They glanced his way, shrugged, and climbed back down. That approach is a lesson for us all.
In the event that this post is becoming preachy, let's broaden the topic beyond tourists being careless. Let's consider individual constraints in the U.S. using free range children and dogs in Ireland as proof points.
In my observation, parents are different in Ireland. I've seen a five-year-old girl riding a training-wheeled bike around the corner and in the middle of a city road. When an oncoming car whipped around that corner and stopped, she stopped too. Her mother, not fussed, was on the sidewalk and called the child over. We've regularly noted young children playing in cars in parking lots, and lots of pre-schoolers walking alongside their parents on sidewalks but unattended. (As in, no handholding - kind of like it used to be with Donald and Melania.)
Speaking of unattended, dogs are free range here too. Galway is a city - people walk their dogs morning, noon and night, but without leashes. These unleashed dogs are perfectly well-behaved and when they do stray away from their owners, they're reasonable about it. They scamper off, but not too far.
Should we be more free range in the U.S.? Do we climb the barrier because it's there? Would we be more cautious on our own, if given the chance? Do we protect our children while inadvertently preventing them from learning how to be pedestrians? Shouldn't a dog run free?