Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive (near miss)."

You may like this to add to your personal accounts or perhaps even an honourable mention. I grew up during the early 60's in a small seaside town at the mouth of the river Yare in Norfolk, UK. Although we had a modern lifeboat kept at anchor in its pen by the harbour wall, the old lifeboat shed and its cobbled slipway was nearby. The slipway descended at an angle of some 30 degrees straight into the river. The mouth of the harbour was about 400 yards away directly into the North Sea, then the next stop was the coast of Holland.

Being 8, dumb and not afflicted with the degree of supervision that kids get nowadays, a bunch of us one summer decided it would be a great wheeze to take a discarded tractor tyre from the nearby dump, then take it in turns to curl up inside it, while the others rolled it down the slipway into the river. The name of the game was to get out before reaching the water. This provided several minutes of hysterical fun until the inevitable happened, I believe Paul Radcliffe being the lucky winner. All hell broke loose as he and the tyre made their way rapidly to open sea. The sight of the big yellow Coastguard helicopter and its crew doing their stuff and saving his ass went some way to compensating for the pain inflicted upon mine by my dad that evening.

Submitted on 03/02/2007

Submitted by: Mike Clarke
Reference:

Copyright © 2007 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
That was a charming tale, Mike! I particularly like the way you constructed the last line! Anyway, I imagine you were all kids, but in a way self-selection starts among animals at a young age (unfortunately for them, there's no Royal Animal Kingdom Coastguard)! Certainly worth sharing with the readers!

Chip said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Thanks for the laugh to start my day! The mental image of Paul riding that tractor tire on its way to Holland is priceless. Maturity is an issue for a full Darwin but we can make exceptions for a Personal Account. Thanks for the hilarious story, Mike

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