AUTHOR OF ARCHENEMIES AND PERCIVAL GYNT AND THE CONSPIRACY OF DAYS

Look Before You Leap?

Look before you leap.

Also, while leaping. That makes landing easier. It would be profoundly weird if you looked, leapt, and then closed your eyes mid-leap, never to open them again.

Which brings us to landing. When you land, keep looking.

Basically, whenever possible, look. Look before you leap. Look while leaping. Look after leaping. Always look.

If you can. If you are blind or otherwise CAN'T look (say, if you are asleep or you have been blindfolded) then you shouldn't look. Because if you can't look and yet you somehow still look, you have created some kind of logical impossibility and possibly a rift in space and time through which other people might fall.

You know, if they're not looking.

Rather than specifying when one SHOULD look, it might be simpler to point out the times one shouldn't.

For instance, when counting to 100 at the beginning of a game of hide-and-go-seek.

When your bride is sneaking into the room to grab her shoes the morning of the wedding.

At an eclipse.

When your grandmother is coming out of the shower and her towel slips.

At Medusa.

If I might suggest a better saying, and this will be by no means perfect or comprehensive, then perhaps:

    Look before you leap and during and after and at all other times except when logically impossible or when counting to 100 during hide-and-go-seek or brides or towels or eclipses or Medusa.

Shove that in your Bartlett's.