A Life of Extremes

This past week, my roommate came home from an evening spent with a mutual friend, looking rather nervous.  “Your friend is crazy,” she said, in that way we have of disassociating ourselves with someone who has done something insane or embarrassing.  “She really is crazy.  And I’m sorry about the video that will appear on Facebook later this week.”  Naturally, this comment sent me directly to Facebook to search.  I found the video, showing my redheaded comrade standing in a small lighted area surrounded by darkness.  Lindsay had a guilty expression that she wears so well and so often.  I watched, my eyes rolling themselves, as she removed her coat, shivered and dithered for a while, and finally jumped into a pitch-black, sub-freezing pond with all her clothes still on. 

Now, the action didn’t surprise me.  Lindsay has been prone to do these things for years.  We met and became friends when she started singing songs on a street tour of London and I joined in.  This impulsive show was uncommon for me, but not, I soon learned, for her.  She’s the kind of person who leaps and dances rather than walks, who has ten facial expressions per emotion, who will throw her arms around me when she sees me and heft me into the air in her delight.  Lindsay has a dozen stories such as the one I describe above.  When we were in school together, she was prone to exploring off-limit areas like old basements and attics, and she had a good relationship with campus security from being caught so many times.  Last year she decided she wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail and spent a vast amount of money on equipment, only to decide after half a day that she was bored of hiking.  She took a bus home.  It’s come to the point that my friends and I insist on reviewing all of Lindsay’s decisions, only half-joking when we do.

When I heard of this most recent escapade, at first I was simply exasperated.  Sooner you than me, was the thought, I believe.  A bit later I started to feel anger, the kind of motherly anger you feel when someone you love does something dumb and gets out of it unscathed.  What if there had been something submerged in the water? I thought.  My impression of the pond was that it wasn’t commonly used for swimming.  What if she’d hit her head on the bottom of the dock?  If she hadn’t come up, my roommate Kathryn—who has not known Lindsay long and is inexperienced at restraining her—would have gone in after her, and she is not a strong swimmer, as she says.  More, what if Lindsay had gotten hypothermia?  She had to drive home in those wet clothes.  Of course most of my post-trauma worries were ridiculous, I know.  But even so, I resolved to give my redheaded friend a smack the next time I saw her.

As I considered this, however, I saw in my mind Lindsay’s face, how easily she laughs and how bright her smile is.  This story will be one of many that brings on that laughter in the future, and the laughter of others.  As I’ve said, she has so many of these stories, rich with experiences that I’ll never have.  My reserve and caution hold me back from excitement like this..  Lindsay, though, lives a life of extremes—the coldest water, the roughest terrain, the most thrilling risks, the most intense emotions, the most terrifying excitement.  And though she might run a risk of not getting a chance for those red coils to turn gray, I still think it’s laudable to live that way, fearless and full to the brim.  I admire both the courage that such a life requires and the trust she places in those who surround her, those like myself who, no matter how many times I facepalm, will always be there to drag her out when she gets in too deep.