What’s your risk appetite?
We were sitting on the curb, the hot sun sizzling our skin. A parade of beauty queens, marching bands, and floats stretched in front of us as far as the eye could see. Spotting a fire truck shooting water at the crowd, my husband and Puppy cheered. I grinned. Finally, relief from the hot sun!
Kitten, on the other hand, wasn’t as amused. At the sight of giant hoses aimed at the crowds, she jumped up and hid behind my back. By this time Puppy was on her feet, waving her hands wildly in the air, hoping the firemen would take aim. My husband was pointing right at her head, encouraging them to drench her.
After the fire truck passed, we watched Puppy wring out her wet shirt and Kitten slowly creep out from behind me. What a difference in the two girl’s reactions!
Being married to an expert in risk, the first thing that occurred to me was that our two girls displayed completely opposite risk appetites. Puppy jumped at the chance to have a high-powered stream of water knock her over. Kitten ran away. Interestingly enough, their risk profiles are not unlike those of my husband and me.
Take his driving, for instance. I personally feel that rocking the car back and forth or tapping on the brakes is an inherently risky proposition (not to mention the signal it sets for the girls in terms of treating vehicles with respect, but that’s an argument, I mean discussion, for another time!) My husband, on the other hand, thinks this is nothing more than harmless play, a way to have a little fun with his girls.
And what about all those times he tosses them above his head and I close my eyes tightly, sure that he’s going to miss, or worse yet, that there will be a ceiling fan on and we’ll become one of those freak fatalities you hear about but never really encounter?
I could name off a dozen more ways in which my risk appetite is inherently smaller than my husband’s, but the bottom line is that by identifying these differences, we are able to talk through them and come up with a set of compromises that serve as a foundation for the rules in our family.
Have you identified the different risk appetites in your family?
