Bear. Not a puppy. Bear. Photo: Screenshot
I had a random debate with a close friend years ago about people using, “if I tell you not to touch that hot stove,” as a metaphor for common sense advice. The idea, of course, is that the person telling a friend not to touch that hot stove is simply looking out for whomever they’re warning. And they do so with the hope that saying, “Hey, that’s hot, you’re gonna burn yourself,” will save the person from unnecessarily experiencing something negative.
Now, here’s my way-too-deep-in-shower-thoughts contention to that: you can’t apply the logic of warning a person about hot stoves to everything in life. Warning somebody a stove is hot only matters if the person being warned knows the discomfort of being burned. You can have no idea what a stove is, sure. But to the point, if you’ve never actually been burned, that warning has no use. Everybody has to have experienced the sensation of being burned once before — in dating, relationships, careers…sending it off a kicker — to then have some inkling of the pain and suffering they can avoid.
That’s hard to apply here, though. “Don’t kneel down and try to feed that bear or you might get mauled,” is totally sage advice that no human should have to toss out from personal experience.
So, with all that nonsense in mind, here’s a lady who saw a black bear and thought it looked like a totally calm and sensible puppy. Or hey, maybe she’s been mauled by a bear before and thought it wasn’t all that bad. The good news is this video went viral just in time to become a leading contender for the 2025 Darwin Awards.
