Do you know any people that are incredibly risk-averse?

fuzzybabybunny

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My dad. With everything I do he has to find some rough lining. He's quite fond of reading "articles" and takes them as complete gospel. Worse, he further convinces himself into believing that the things these articles are conveying are in fact commonplace and happen all the time.

Ex. I like to camp and hike. He has never done these things in his entire life. Every time I see him I'm constantly pounded by "I wish you didn't do these things" and "it's too dangerous." To him, car camping at developed campgrounds might as well be Russian roulette. Mountain lions and bears are everywhere and hunger ONLY for human flesh and actively seek it because they have nothing else to eat. Bad men with knives and guns roam the woods on a regular basis. Getting wet will kill you instantly. It's always the same "this article said" BS.

Ex. 2: We saw a person flying a powered parachute and I said how I would like to take up the activity in the future. This is probably close to one of the safest forms of flying there is. 30mph. You're flying a goddamned parachute. If your engine cuts out, you're on a goddamned parachute. Only real risks are your lines get tangled and power lines.

Guess what my dad starts spewing?

"In this article I read that a flock of birds kept on attacking this person flying in his parachute. He tried to evade them but they kept attacking. They bit him a lot of times, and one of them got snagged in his lines and he began to spiral out of control. It was only with a lot of luck that he managed to get free. He almost died. Never do such things."

Ex. 3: Skiing. He reads articles all the time of people's lives being ruined from skiing accidents (paralysis, even just broken limbs). He doesn't allow skiing.

Right now his fixation is snow. California is being battered with snowstorms and since it's in the VERY general area of Phoenix, AZ, he's worried to death about my life being taken away by a snowstorm. He absolutely hates snow.

His second fixation right now is that hiker in Georgia who has become missing. This is just further fueling his fear of all things outside of his armchair.

I mean, how can people like him live like this? He's 60 and getting to the time of retiring. He does nothing interesting with his life except work and stay at home polluting his mind with these "articles." No matter what I say, it doesn't change the fact that he'd rather just ignore sense and instead focus on everything that could go wrong.
 

jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
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He's worried about snow - in Phoenix..? Isn't that like me being worried about a sandstorm in NH? :p

 

Slew Foot

Lifer
Sep 22, 2005
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My wifes dad is like that. He wouldnt let her go to the prom in high school since he though the boat it was on would sink.

 

Capt Caveman

Lifer
Jan 30, 2005
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You complain and worry too much. You can't change your parents, so just accept them for who they are and move on.
 

fuzzybabybunny

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Originally posted by: JLee
He's worried about snow - in Phoenix..? Isn't that like me being worried about a sandstorm in NH? :p

Hey - he's also worried about being attacked by a flock of birds. It's par for the course.

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
You complain and worry too much. You can't change your parents, so just accept them for who they are and move on.

I'm just venting. I personally don't care how they live the rest of their lives, because it's entirely in their hands. If they're too afraid to do anything with the time that they have left, that's their issue to deal with. I accept them just fine. But it's when they butt into my life and my personal affairs and constantly tell me over and over that they don't approve of what I'm doing and trying to dissuade me from doing the things that I WILL DO ANYWAY based on their retarded fears... it just gets so infuriatingly annoying. I just don't want to hear it anymore. This is my free time. This is my vacation. This is my life. Keep your damned thoughts to yourself. You live your life, I live mine. Give me some quite enjoyment. That's it.

You have no idea how many times they've told me that they don't get a wink of sleep when I'm out on my trips because they get so worried. It's to the point where all I can say is "Well, that's your problem, not mine. I'm still going to continue living my life the way I want to live it. I'm not going to change it for you, ever. Man up and deal with it or continue to live in fear." I'm through trying to alleviate their fears with, knowledge, experience, facts, and logic. It just doesn't work. They continue to be ignorant of everything that I do and they continue to be brainwashed by their "articles."

This is something that I find exceedingly unattractive about Chinese culture if it's taken to the extreme. Your life is more the property of your family than it is your's! They can't seem to comprehend the phrase "go live your own life and let me live mine."

My dad's entire side of the family is like this. I feel like I'm living with a bunch of mice that scurry and scream at anything. Luckily my mom's side, my mom EXCLUDED, is more understanding because they have more experience with, um, life. They don't have nearly the same wanderlust and "roughing it" attitude that I do, but at least they respect what I'm doing and understand that I have a good head on my shoulders and that I'm not some f*cking lemming out for a suicide drive.
 

fuzzybabybunny

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Originally posted by: Slew Foot
My wifes dad is like that. He wouldnt let her go to the prom in high school since he though the boat it was on would sink.

What in the hell? Was the boat damaged or old or was it the simple fact that it was just a boat?
 

sash1

Diamond Member
Jul 20, 2001
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i learned about risk aversion in Econ 150... yeah, just thought i'd throw that out there
 

Slew Foot

Lifer
Sep 22, 2005
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Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
Originally posted by: Slew Foot
My wifes dad is like that. He wouldnt let her go to the prom in high school since he though the boat it was on would sink.

What in the hell? Was the boat damaged or old or was it the simple fact that it was just a boat?

Naw it was just your average party yacht rented out for functions. Nothing broken or damaged about it.
 

sonambulo

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Feb 22, 2004
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Have you tried inviting your old man out on any of these trips? Or telling him to just shut the hell up? What kind of reaction have you gotten?
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
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7th grade, the entire grade was going on a bus trip, I think it was to somewhere 65 miles away. My mom didn't want me going so far away "on my own." Nevermind that it was supervised by the teachers, and that I was on a bus of other people. It was too far away, so I wasn't allowed to go.
When I was born, it was either 3 or 5 weeks afterwards that she took me farther from home than the back yard. I was my parents' first child, I guess they were afraid of breaking me or something.

I never really cared for doing anything remotely dangerous though, so I guess they didn't really hold me back too much. (Though it's entirely possible that this aversion to risk was a learned behavior.)
 

Greenman

Lifer
Oct 15, 1999
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Wow. My parents gave me a rifle, a box of ammo and no instructions when I was nine. During the summer it was common for us to take off on our horses at 7am and not return until 9pm, the only thing we were told was not to do anything that would hurt the horses.
 

EGGO

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Jul 29, 2004
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Ex-girlfriend's mother was incredibly like that. Needless to say it created a lot of boredom when I wanted to do something and she was obligated to listen to her.
 

BrownTown

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Dec 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: Farang
Never listen to random people on the internet.

FIXED!

but seriously yeah ALOT of parents are like that, my mom sure as heck is about everything, to this day she freaks out if all her kids drive in the same car because then she might lose all of us at once (just FYI were talking 22 to 26 year olds here). And pretty much panics over every single thing known to man. I mean she is one of those people who wouldn't let us go to R rated movies or get "M" rated games until we were 18 and didn't let us go over to a friends house or on dates until 16 (which btw meant nobody was interested anymore and we are all losers now).

I don't know about your dad, by there is a point where anxiety goes from being protective of your kid to being a serious mental illness, my mom takes anxiety meds and goes to a therapist and all that because she has some pretty serious issues with anxiety, and even with all that she is still going off and doing things like going to the doctor 10 times a year convinced she has some new disease, or like freaking out this Christmas when my 22 year old brother went walking to the corner store to buy milk after dark as if he is gonna be mugged walking half a mile through upper middle class suburbs.
 

Saint Michael

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Aug 4, 2007
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Aren't you Asian? Asian parents sound pretty crazy. Wasn't it Ricemarine saying a while back that his dad absolutely forbid anyone in his house from exercising? Like, he snatched a bottle of aspirin from his daughter and flushed the pills down the toilet because he thought they might be diet pills, and twice destroyed the treadmill his wife bought with a hammer. Actually, that story was pretty funny, but whoever was telling it was pretty pissed off.