The other day, I was putting on some shorts that I carelessly dropped on the floor the previous evening. I do this a lot, I'm not very fastidious about tidying at the end of the day.
I was putting on the shorts, when I noticed a scuttling little tan insect on my leg, desperately making for the floor. The little tan insect was a scorpion.
Immediately I brushed the scorpion off, and shivered with the intense rush of barely avoiding a really bad experience. I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and crushed the scorpion with it. Not that I was eager to get close to it, but I certainly didn't want a scorpion lurking around the room.
Scorpion stings are usually not dangerous for an adult, but they're very painful, and the pain can last for a week or more. And then you have weird numbness to the area where you were stung, that lasts for weeks.
So, I learned my lesson, and every time I picked up a piece of clothing on the ground, I would shake it out. No more worries, right?
Here's the funny part. Halfway through the next day, I realized...I did the exact same routine, that morning. Put on a pair of shorts that I hadn't shaken out.
Wow. You'd think a near miss would make me a little more cautious, but here's the thing...it was a near MISS. It didn't actually happen, I didn't get stung by the scorpion and thus that very strong pain and emotion didn't get triggered. So it doesn't imprint itself nearly as much on your memory.
Here's another story. Biking once, many decades ago, I crossed a railroad track at an angle, not head on. And my front time got caught in the track, and I went down, hard and painfully, and got badly scraped up.
What will I now always be very aware of when biking? Railroad tracks. I'm always very careful to hit them perpendicularly, so I don't get the same problem again.
What are some of the things that you learned the hard way?