"Have you ever taken your children to the aquarium in Atlanta?" I asked my hairstylist this morning. We were talking about her plans to visit her sister down there this summer.
"No," she replied. "Is it nice?"
"It's amazing!" I told her. "My niece and nephew are 18 and 20 now, but they have loved it all their lives."
She nodded. "We'll have to try it."
"In fact," I continued, "my nephew actually swam with the whale sharks in the big tank last month."
"Wow!" she said. "I would be much too afraid to do that!"
"He said he was afraid," I laughed, "but glad he did it."
"I'm African," she shook her head, "I would never."
I nodded and considered her reply. Yorda grew up in Ethiopia during a time of famine and civil war, and she often expresses her gratitude for the relative stability she has found here in the U.S. I guess maybe it is a privilege of Western society to take unnecessary risks for fun, even if they seem harmless.
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