"I WANT TO PLAY WITH MY CHAINS"
A One Act Play
Starring: Tractorguy (T} and Kubotalady (K)
T: I have decided to keep on chain lifting with my FEL. Yessirrre, some lift lift here, lift lift there, here a lift, there a lift, everywhere a lift lift ...
K: Oh, really. What's your rationale?
T: Well, basically, I've done it a lot of it in the past, and I want to do it more of it in the future, so I therefore declare it to be virtuous behavior.
K: Yes, we've heard that here. We call it the Bill Clinton Rationalization.
T: How dare you!
K: What about all our warning labels and 37 paragraphs of safety precautions?
T: Well, I have a secret pool of knowledge that informs me that they are all phoney-baloney nonsense. Just the misguided CYA'ing of a bunch of chickendreck executives being scared dreckless by a bunch of out-of-touch, risk-averse pinstriped legal drones.
K: Gee, I thought we were just trying, in good faith, to inform our customers of potentially dangerous situations based on our decades of tractor operation experience all around the world. You mean its all nonsense...even the stuff about ROPS, and seatbelts, and not driving with your bucket high, and not driving crossways on steep slopes, and not carrying a child on your lap when brushhogging, and ...
T: Well, perhaps some of your warnings and labels do make sense, but I have an alternate reason for continuing to chain lift.
K: What's that?
T: Even if all your other warnings and labels are realistic and reasonable, my secret pool of knowledge informs me that the FEL lifting warnings are still nonsense, and my beloved FEL lifting can thus be engaged in with impunity.
K: We have heard that, too. Call it the Christopher Reeve Prediction. Aside from why we put the labels on and who may or may not be liable when FEL injuries occur, doesn't it trouble you that in the real world people are in fact being injured, and property damaged, by FEL lifting mishaps?
T: Not at all. All those people are boneheads, dolts, idiots and otherwise inferior human beings.
K: Well, Brad and Wen have admitted to mishaps when chain lifting. Are they boneheads, dolts, idiots and inferior human beings?
T: Not so fast, my clever Kubotalady. You're not going to trick me into ratting-out my Tractorbynet buddies. Besides, there is a final reason why those injuries and damages won't happen to me.
K: Oh?
T: You see, I have common sense. I'm logical and practical. I have foresight. I prepare. I think. And--here is the coup de gras--I read Tractorbynet. So, I am essentially invulnerable. Nothing can happen to me.
K: Ah, yes ... the Evel Knievel Illusion.
T: Isn't he still alive?
K: Barely. Listen, Tractorguy, has it ever occurred to you that instead of speculating about our labeling motives and the legitimacy of lawsuits, you should be focusing on whether chain lifting is an inherently dangerous activity.
T: What's an inherently dangerous activity?
K: It is one where you cannot foresee or protect against all the dangers. There are too many variables. It is an activity that requires more than common sense and gut feel--it requires formal training plus long years of actual experience. And, even then, unforeseeable dangers remain.
Things like canoeing class 4 rapids, rockclimbing, driving a car . . .
T: Or climbing high on scaffolds.
K: Precisely. Anything where the LOUC may apply with significant frequency.
T: What's the LOUC?
K: Ths Law of Unintended Consequences.
T: I don't remember it. I left all my physics in a bar near Columbia University 30 years ago.
K: Well, perhaps you know it by one of its other names ... Murphy's Law.
T: Murphy? I don't know Murphy. I think he posts on the Compact Tractor Board, not on Tractorbynet.
K: Well, perhaps you might know it by its technical name.
T: What's that?
K: Sh*t Happens.
(curtain)
