So What Are You Watching?

By Lela Davidson
Fancast.com

Last night Mary Ann and her husband sat down to relax in front of the TV, flipping on the History Channel for the new season of Ice Road Truckers. Mary Ann, who lives in Marshall, Arkansas, claims the most dangerous job she’s ever worked is Mother, but that doesn’t stop her from living vicariously through the daring feats of men performing one of the deadliest occupations in the world. The reality show/documentary that depicts the special brand of truckers who spend 90 days of the year hauling 10,000 loads of equipment over a temporarily frozen lake to the diamond mines of Canada. [watch video]

This is manly stuff — and it is, in fact, Mary Ann’s husband’s favorite show. Better than football, she says. Who can blame him? The action includes marking off new roads, driving huge semi-trailers over 16” of ice through white outs, and trying all the while not to freeze to death. But it’s worth it. These guys can make as much in three months as they do the whole rest of the year. “The seatbelts come off when they hit the ice,” says Mary Ann. “In case they have to bail out in a hurry.”

Mary Ann once worked in a garment factory, where needles were known to pierce the occasional fingernail. But she’s never had a job where her life was actually in danger (excepting Motherhood) Her husband is a former oil rig worker and four-wheel racer. Naturally, he can’t get enough of the panic factor. I asked Mary Ann why she supposed “Ice Road Truckers” was her husband’s first choice, as opposed to, say, The Office or Project Runway, and she answered simply, “People tend to watch things they’d secretly like to do.”