R.I.P. Bobby Leach

Dear readers, please don’t be chagrined or slightly bumfuzzled if you can’t readily call to mind the late Mr. Bobby Leach.  Most people can’t either unless you are like me and store useless trivia inside your brain housing unit (the skull).

Mr. Leach met his earthly demise back in April of 1926 when he was in New Zealand.   It was reported that he slipped on an orange peel (not the routine banana peel mind you). He took a fall that injured his leg, which then became infected, which then led to gangrene, which led to his leg amputation, which led to medical complications, that resulted in Bobby’s death.  (Sorry for the run-on sentence, kind of gets you dizzy?)

Okay “then”,  you may say and possibly ask me,  “So what Gumshoe?”  What’s your misguided point or fractured logic? Well? “Well”, I reply,  in the realm of “risibility”, good old Bobby Leach was reported to be the second person to strap himself into a barrel and take the plunge over Niagara Falls on July 25, 1911.  You may question his sanity,  I certainly would!

Bobby did sustain some injuries that caused him to take up a six-month hospital residence to repair his two busted knee caps (Double Ouch! Ouch!) Bobby’s occupation (or some may call it the personification of a “Death Wish”) was a stunt man (big surprise) with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Send in the clowns from inside that tiny car. I guess that Bobby had to “make his own rain” or “barrel splash (Ouch! Ouch!) to promote his craft? No internet or iPhone cameras in the day don’t ya know?

Now ponder these facts kind readers.  Take a few moments . . .

Aren’t we all kind of like the late Bobby Leach, stuntman extraordinaire? Yes, I know, most of us are risk-averse?  Any volunteers out there to man (or woman) their own barrel born Niagara sojourn?  I think not, plus it would be illegal nowadays anyway. However, take pause dear readers, we routinely and semi-consciously take personal risks every day of our fragile lives -(maybe calculated, but still risks when we: Drive or ride in a car, fly inside an airplane, (Aeroflot for sure!) take an elevator, cross the street, stand inside our shower stalls, etc., etc., ad nauseam – you get the point.

We are not stunted persons, we all just have blind faith in our modes of travel and our modes of traverse, mechanical or on our own two feet with the rock-solid belief that we will get where we set out to reach.

I’m sure that Bobby was “sure-footed” until he was not.

Our personal departures from this earth (like Bobby’s) may be sudden and unexpected by that lying in wait orange peel (whoops!) and not on that poorly maintenance Aeroflot plane that we would not take anyway comrades.

Hopefully,  this musing (misguided?) missive have given some temporary respite (perhaps a laugh or a chuckle and maybe a guffaw) to you my dear readers from today’s troubling events.

R.I.P. Bobby!

Remember to love the ones who love you and try to love the ones who don’t.