Andy Kessler died at the young age of 48 in August. He was known as a Skateboard Pioneer for bringing the creation of skate parks to New York City.
His death, caused by an allergic reaction to an insect bite, is tragic. After news broke that he had died, it was also said that about 45 people die every year in the United States because of allergic reactions resulting from insect bites or stings. 45 people. Each year.
That number seems like such a senseless loss. Kessler’s death reminds me of when Steve Irwin passed away due to a stingray that stung him in the heart. After this man spent his life around dangerous animals, he takes a quick swim with his cameraman and gets stung in exactly the right spot to cause cardiac arrest.
These incidents seems so pointless to me. How does one protect themselves against events that in any other case would be trivial? People get stung by bees and insects every day. Countless divers have been stung by stingrays before, only to quickly recover.
My family vacations in Florida every year and when I was little I remember doing the “stingray shuffle” each time we entered the ocean. We’d rub our feet back and forth to kick up sand, which would scare any stingrays away so we could swim in peace. I’ve stood in the ocean and stared through the clear blue water as stingrays swum around us. When we got too scared to keep standing there we’d lift our legs up and quickly scramble onto our rafts. I was never stung.
It’s hard to sit here, at my laptop, and calculate the meaning of these losses and many more that occur each year. Life seems far too big, far too important and mysterious to only be ended short by such a trivial event.
