My father, the adventurer

This is my father’s obituary.
He’s not dead. I’m writing it ‘just in case’, you might say.
You see, my father is something of an adventurer. Unless he spends three months of the year in mortal danger (and drinking water that goes in brown and fluid and comes out much the same way), he feels quite deprived.
A couple of years ago he sailed up China’s Yangtze River on a raft fashioned from a piece of bark and a dead washing machine. I think he envisaged being shot at from the riverbanks and felt ripped-off that everything he’d learned about Communists as a school-kid under Menzies was not, in fact, true.
So this year it’s South America. He’s climbing the Andes and sailing the Amazon. After all, those Columbian drug-runners will just have to shoot at him. And with all those wild beasties in the rainforest, why there’s a plethora of exotic and random ways to die.
I asked him to take a photo if he does indeed decide to wrangle an anaconda.
“How about I just bring you back the anaconda?”
And if it wasn’t for our Quarantine laws, he would, too.
I’m a bit of a let-down to my Dad. I’m what he calls, ‘soft’.
My childhood under his parental tutelage was one long, endless rite of passage.
I remember him coaching my school football team.
“Come on Bolt, put your body on the line!”
“No way, what are you nuts? Have you seen the size of that guy? You want the ball so bad, go get the bloody thing yourself”.
Going camping with Dad was always terrifying. He’s the kind of guy who likes to scale sheer cliff-faces, but considers ropes not only unnecessary, but ‘girlie’.
And he’d say things like, “Come on, come closer to the edge, the view’s great,” or “Nah, it’s safe to dive in here, the waters deep.”
It’s only once you’ve taken the plunge that he’d say… “Corse, that croc could be a bit of a bitch”.
Then he would punctuate my screams and swearing with his favourite catch-cry, “Where’s your sense of adventure?”, which he said every time he endangered my life.
My father’s headstone will read, “The kind of man you’d like to have in a tight spot… which he probably got you into in the first place.”