When I was a young teen we got an old-fashioned wooden toboggan for Christmas. We had a pond with a steep dam and a canal at the bottom. My older brother volunteered to try it first. When he flew up out of that ditch it looked like something from a cartoon: he seemed suspended about 10' in the air. Then he came straight down. When we got to him he couldn't move; he came straight down on his spine. We dragged him home and eventually he regained his muscle control and was all right. He had a syndrome where he had weak connective tissues and often broke bones. That should have killed him but the "idiot-kid gods" were there that day. I guess they had abandoned him when he grew up and went rappelling. His sling came loose and he fell on top of a rock spire which crushed his hip. He ended up getting a pin and a scare about AIDS from the transfusions.
The older I get the more I would rather be considered a good man than a good fisherman.