What's the best way to teach a child to be leery of thin ice?

My late father's favored approach was to tell a story that ended with some poor kid in his childhood hometown falling through the ice and not getting fished out until spring.

Kids in his little town on the Vermont/New York border were always meeting their maker in his cautionary tales. The body count was nothing short of astonishing.

Of course, I tended to be careful about fresh ice. So maybe my father knew what he was doing.

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