Wednesday’s Child: Another Statistic
“Don’t be a statistic!” was, as I recall it, a didactic phrase widely used by our elders to check a youthful tendency to irresponsible behavior of various kinds, such as driving while under the influence of cheap alcohol or crossing the road without having first looked both ways. What this meant to communicate was something like “33.000 people will die in motor vehicle traffic crashes this year in the United States alone, and if you aren’t going to be careful you may be one of them.” As a sometime compulsive gambler, now long cured though as ever unrepentant, I...