If your friends jumped off a bridge ...

Brother, is it hot.

Too hot to move, too hot to stay still. Too hot to think.

It's so hot it almost makes you want to jump off the nearest bridge.

“I've heard a lot of people do it, and I've heard it's fun,” one girl from Marion told KCRG-TV9 reporter Addison Speck. “It's the adrenaline that really gets to you,” a Cedar Rapids boy told the reporter.

“There could be logs and stuff and you could land on one, but I lived,” another girl said. Yeah, OK, I can see her ... wait a minute.

If you gave up this week trying to concentrate on anything but the river systems of sweat as they flowed down your backside to the delta between your toes, here's the skinny: Linn County teenagers have been jumping off local bridges into the Cedar River, then uploading video of their daring feats onto YouTube.

You and I know this is stupid for about a hundred million different reasons. We also know that teenagers have been doing stupid stuff since - well, about immediately after we were teenagers ourselves.

Because when we grabbed that rope and swung out over the gravel pit, that was just fun. Sure, there might have been logs and stuff - or that junky car that those two guys pushed off the bank that time just to see what would happen - but we lived, right?

If, as our moms always seemed to ask, our friends jumped off a bridge, we wouldn't just have jumped right in there after them, we'd have tried to figure out a way to make our jump even more spectacular - just to save face for not having thought of it first.

Which is why it's no small miracle that as many teenagers survive to adulthood as do. Of course, not all of us survive. Especially not the ones who pull bonehead stunts like jumping off bridges.

It's not just the air conditioning that gave Linn County Sheriffs Office Col. John Stuelke the presence of mind to warn kids about their bridge-jumping adventures. It's experience.

How do you think he knows about the rocks and debris, about surprising currents, about just how heavily the risks outweigh those few exhilarating seconds in the air after your feet leave the bridge and before you - hopefully - surface from the water.

There's at least one drowning each year in the rivers around here. Every one of those deaths could have been avoided.

So if your friends are jumping off bridges, don't play lemming. It's not worth it. It's hot outside, but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid.

Do your diving at the pool.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net