Ideas:

-Something dangerous/learning about interesting ways to die and how this taught me to be appreciative

-Farm and how it makes me appreciate the environment        -killing stuff         -Music      -Leo

• List of inventors killed by their own inventions
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths
• Find a cool quote or two about appreciating life
• Use puns on figures of speech
• Elaborate rich story with strong hand gestures (swinging hatchet etc.)
• Crashed the truck and Dad’s friend Tony’s shelves collapsed onto the truck. Obviously didn’t do a good enough job as a couple of months later mum backed the boat into the shelves.
• Cutting Hayden with a new hatchet over a muffin tray
• I do like injuring my brother/sorry haydo here you are again, he was only four when I interestingly broke his leg in a wrestling fight. It was only a fun wrestling match – for once we weren’t actually fighting each other out of dislike. The interesting thing about this fight was that the safety barrier (generally used to stop injuries occurring) was the fault with Hayden tripping over it.
• Once I had collected all of these oddly dangerous memories I was inspired into investigating some other interesting yet also dangerous experiences that other people had had, particularly those experiences that had lead to death or serious injury.
• The underlying message: Life is fragile and when it ends you hope that you have enjoyed your life so you might as well make sure you enjoy and appreciate everything to it’s fullest. Cause it makes a mockery of the strength of life which is actually a very fragile thing that humans think they have a great control over by using routine etc. So it sounds a bit like .b and mindfulness but worry less about tomorrow and more abut today. So just enjoy it, just send it.
• “Life is like an ice cream. Enjoy it before it melts.” This is one of the many bad quotes you can find on the internet when you are in search for inspiration. But I suppose it makes sense.
• Moral: Things can end up different to what you expected in the blink of an eye, and this is important as
• “Life is like an ice cream. Enjoy it before it melts.”

The first incident I am going to talk about involved a hatchet, a muffin tray and my brother Hayden. Anyway, so there I was. Age 11. Trying out my new toy. The hatchet was a birthday present from Grandpa and I was sitting out in the orchard with Hayden, boredly chopping stuff up. ‘Chop’ – Snapped a twig. “Chop, Chop, Chop” – A piece of firewood splits in two and… I am still not sure to this day what inspired me to attempt to cut through an old muffin tray with a hatchet, nor am I sure about what inspired Hayden to put his hand between my swinging hatchet and the muffin tray so let’s just say it was lucky that the hatchet wasn’t any sharper.

Hayden screamed as rich crimson liquid instantly began pouring out of his finger, his whole hand stained red within seconds and I was just thinking oh no – I was certain that I had severed his finger beyond repair {strong hand gesture like leo would do} and I felt so bad, so guilty as I rushed him to mum down in the house. However luckily after it had been washed off with some antiseptic and water, mum told me that it wasn’t severed beyond repair, however it still was pretty wrecked and would require stitches. So Hayden was very lucky that this incident did not go any worse for him, and we actually both got something out of it. Hayden got a scar and I learnt that in a blink of an eye, things can very quickly change from something you wouldn’t perceive as being dangerous to a potentially severe injury and we were lucky that things didn’t end up any worse than they did.

This whole thing reminds me of another incident also involving Hayden (sorry bro). I was six years old, so he was four and we were still living back down in Southland. Dinner was over and before bed we decided to have a wrestling match in our pyjamas, so we pushed the dining chairs into a circle shape in the middle of the lounge in order to provide a ‘safety ring’ that would act as boundary for the fight and more importantly would stop us hurting ourselves by falling into other furniture and the walls. As it would turn out the ‘safety ring’ would do exactly the opposite of what we intended it for.

So the wrestling began and ‘hmph’ I can’t really remember but I was probably beating him by heaps when we had just started a new round, and Hayden and I were walking around the ring while facing each other. In my head I was picturing myself as a pro wrestler acting casual and tough but then – boom Hayden’s charging at me like a wounded bull and surprised and needing to act quickly I cross my arms like this {crosses arms} and push myself into him, expecting that it will stop him being able to bounce me backwards, but, I am larger than him and by stepping into the collision I end up putting to much force into the movement so instead it’s Hayden who begins slowly stumbling backwards and it’s Hayden who slowly trips over our safety barrier of chairs and it’s Hayden who twists and breaks his leg. Opps.

Both of these incidents had something in common; and that is the fact that as a result of an injury I learnt a valuable life lesson: That in a blink of an eye, things can change for the worse. But there are so many other incidents that I have been involved in that convey the same message. How I got each of these two scars on my knee for example, or why the corrugated iron shed where the truck parks is bent outwards like this, and don’t even get me started on my little sister, she’s broken four bones in her arms alone; and three of them she broke at the same time.

This message is a valuable one as it teaches us about our boundaries as humans, increases our overall knowledge and therefore also allows us to be able to make better informed decisions in the future (such as don’t put your hand under a swinging hatchet).

*For example my knife safety has improved and I am now more conscious of those around me when handling a sharp tool.

So I hope from my speech today, that everyone can take something away that they have learnt about unfortunate accidents and what they teach us about our boundaries, overall knowledge and decision-making and that you can apply this new knowledge to some of your own experiences. Thanks for listening.