It's referred to by some as "the stupid line," the line one crosses from taking a smart risk to taking a stupid risk. It's the difference between, say, learning to mountain climb with the proper gear or just setting out on your own. Or maybe choosing to leave your 10-year-old alone in a room with a lit fireplace, compared to leaving your one-year-old. The consequences of one choice are much different than the other.

—Agnes Bongers, "Risk Management," The Hamilton Spectator, May 6, 2003

And here I thought 'the stupid line' was walking up to a strange hot chick in a ritzy boutique and making a first acquaintance by by blurting out "You know, you look like you have a really hot pussy."  Yep, I once upon a time, did exactly that.  And the shocking thing was, a half hour later, she was accompanying me to my apartment.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Truth is, though, I think we all cross 'the stupid line' just by being born into this world.  Remaining in the state of unbirth poses no risks whatsoever.  But to cross into the thresholds of perception by consuming this exotic hallucinogen called 'Life', ah, baby, you ought to be expecting one helluva motherfucking risky trip. 

Driving drunk late at night down two lanes of the highway and directly over the broken middle lane lines because you think that they are arrows directing you to your bullseye home.  Now those are stupid lines.  Yep, I've done that too.

Still...  Learn or die.  Yet take no risk in dying, and you'll stay unborn forever and never learn.   It's cozy over there on the other side of unbirth, isn't it, all-smug and pre-preternatural?  Comfortably numb. 

But here's the dark secret: The 'unborn' are always trying life on by slipping into the corpses of the dead.  Yes, they are nature's true necromancers.  A no-risk feel-what-a-body-feels-like shot into deadliness.  Kind of like going to a 'used shoe' store and trying on all the shoes without any intent of buying any.  Yum, smell those stinky feet!

Not me.  I just bought a new pair of running shoes yesterday.  Love the pungently smart smell of their vinyl and rubber.  Reminds me of the first, naked Barbie doll I ever whiffed.   Yow!   Going to go running and tripping in the cemetery tomorrow.   Over the bodies of the dead.  And well beyond the imagination of the unborn. 

Life, the final frontier.