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Sometimes a person will make an enormous mistake and get a lot of time to think about it. There was a man who went over Niagara Falls sealed inside a big rubber ball. It never made it to the bottom. The ball lodged somewhere on the way down. He'd counted on his team to cut him out at the bottom. Oops! Aron Ralston, the hero of
127 Hours, had an Oops! moment. That's even what he calls it. He went hiking in the wilderness without telling anyone where he was going, and then, in a deep, narrow crevice, got his forearm trapped between a boulder and the canyon wall. Oops.
We all heard about this. Ralston stumbled out to safety more than five days later, having cut off his own right arm to escape. He is an upbeat and resilient person and has returned to rock climbing, although now, I trust, after filing a plan, going with a companion, and not leaving his Swiss Army knife behind. The knife would have been ever so much more convenient than his multipurpose tool. I imagine that every time he considers his missing right forearm, he feels that under the circumstances he's better off without it.... [full review]