using your imagination

imagine that you're walking along an idyllic beach in goa. and imagine that you come across a group of young men and children, also walking along the idyllic beach in goa. and imagine that they brought their bull with them out for a walk. i mean, why wouldn't a bull also enjoy a day out at the beach? having a bit of trouble imagining this? here's a picture to help you:

next, imagine a large group of people in colorful t-shirts doing a teambuilding event further down the beach. imagine that the area in which they are doing the teambuilding is surrounded by pretty, colorful flags. again, a picture to help stimulate your imagination:

now, imagine the bull coming upon this scene. add in the cheerful shouts of the people in colorful t-shirts. add in that they were very focused on their competition and not on the lookout for a bull on the beach (who would be?). add in the fact that bull is used for goan bull fighting--not like in spain, but bull against bull in the ring. add in that the people were out walking him for exercise and that his muscles made him strong and that his horns had been sharpened with a file to make him more lethal to his bull opponents.

remember that it was children and young men who were walking the bull.

let's go for a moment into the bull's brain. he comes upon a scene filled with colorful flags, people shouting and running around and he thinks, "hey, i'm ON, this must be the bullfight that these silly people always make me do." so our friend the bull breaks away from the young men and heads straight through the thick of the group. tossing one person into the air, trampling another and in the end, goring one with those sharp horns right in the arm.

the lucky thing about the scenario we are imagining (because this must be imagination, right, it couldn't really happen? no one would walk a bull on a beach. you'd have a better chance of being abducted by aliens than having that happen, right?) is that it happened among a very calm, level-headed group of ships' officers. within seconds, they were making sure their colleagues were ok and were helping the man who was gored over to a golfcart that could take him quickly to the waiting ambulance back at the hotel proper.

three people were taken to a hospital to be checked out and the one who was gored in the arm had to stay overnight and have some surgery, while the other two were shaken up and bruised (one had a perfect bull hoof-shaped bruise on her arm), but released right away. the one who gored was in high spirits the entire time, flirting with the pretty sari-clad doctor and all of the nurses. he even tried to insist that he didn't want any anaesthetic for his surgery (he was a finn, after all, so very stoic). so, if it had to happen to someone at the event, it couldn't have happened to a better guy. (that sounds much harsher than i mean it to--i mean it in a good way.)

and the girl who was responsible for the whole event? she was pretty shaken up. she thought she had taken every safety precaution imaginable, but she had, admittedly, lacked the imagination to predict that someone would walk their fighting bull on the beach right where the teambuilding was taking place. in the risk analysis, that was somewhere below the group being hit by a stray meteor.