Are you a glass half-full, or glass half-empty person? Do you look for the worst, and expect it to happen to you, or is life one big sugarplum and you can’t wait to take the next bite regardless of what is in the center? Optimist, or pessimist, which are you? Why choose, be both.

I’ve been accused of being a pessimist. I can live with that. My definition of a pessimist is an optimist with experience. I’ve got over 60 years of life’s adventures to make me a cautiously optimistic pessimist.

Being such has served me well. I do not remember a time when I wasn’t pessimistic to some degree, and I believe being so has saved me a lot of pain.

There was a swimming hole where I grew up that took quite a dare to get into if you didn’t want to walk the near mile to get down the cliff to the river then walk back to the deep hole under the cliff. The easy way was to take a 100-foot running start and jump off the cliff into the water 40 feet below. The running start was necessary to be able to clear the sloping curve of the bank at the bottom of the cliff. If you executed a 15-foot broad jump, you cleared the protruding bank with plenty to spare and landed in the deepest water. If you were short, well, that is where the pessimism came in.

I didn’t have any trouble with the 15-foot broad jump, but there were some who couldn’t, and were dared to do so. I was never there when it happened, but I heard stories. It wasn’t pretty, but the practice continued, injuries and all.

I was there when a bicycle was introduced into the challenge. The dare was to ride the bike off the cliff into the water. I could make the jump, but with a bicycle under me? I didn’t think so, and voiced my pessimism.

“Chicken,” was the kindest epithet thrown my way. Most were much more colorful and vulgarly descriptive of my caution, but peer pressure at its worst could not get me beyond my clear understanding of the laws of physics and momentum.

The first two riders made it, but barely, with the second landing in shallow water. The weight of his 200 pounds meeting the bottom with the bicycle between, managed to rearrange the cycle’s front wheel making riding a challenge. The derision directed at me increased, but I stuck with what some would call fear, or worse. I saw no good end to this activity. The third rider attempted his challenge against the laws of gravity on a bike that no longer tracked straight, and could not build up sufficient speed to launch it and its rider off the cliff.

Only those in the water saw the result. They described it as a valiant effort to ride the bent bike down the vertical wall of the cliff. They say he would have made it if the already damaged front wheel had not bent double on initial impact with the cliff face. The rider got a literal crash course in the aforementioned laws of physics and gravity. He did not fare well, and the rest of the afternoon was spent getting him up the cliff without doing further damage to his leg, arm and face. I never said, “I told you so.”

Pessimism has served me well in other areas of my life. I leave early to allow sufficient time to change a tire, hit a deer, cook an omelet, fight off a charging herd of T-rex, or any other obstruction fate can throw at me. In consequence, I am seldom late and, in my dating days, often got to visit with the parents of my dates because I was early. I didn’t say the philosophy was without drawbacks.

Murphy’s law states, “If it can happen, it will.” Pessimism requires me to “be prepared,” the motto of the Boy Scouts. I prepare for the worst, and anything better than that, it’s been a good day. I guess you could say I am optimistically pessimistic in my expectations of something going wrong. If that statement confuses you, try living it. I wonder how I ever got this far in life. I never expected to.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, and his other works viewed at www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.