Five Fearful Seconds

I like to sleep late on holidays. No reason to get up and do anything vigorous. I also like to not dress too formal on days when there is nothing special to do. So I wear very casual clothes, leaving normal clothes on a chair in my [our?] bedroom. About 3 PM, my Thai wife musters her daughter and her nephew into the back yard and they start up the lawn-mower and the brush-cutter. Tidying up the yard, I guessed, as I checked out the latest offerings on UKNova. Several minutes later, our son – 3.75 YOA - who speaks mostly Thai came in and told me “kii”. Chorp kii.

Well, to me that is Thai for him wanting to go to the toilet. Within seconds he had disappeared. I checked the toilet and he wasn’t there. I looked out the back door to the hive of activity, and he wasn’t there. I went into the back yard to ask wife where the boy was [I was in my boxer shorts, but the back yard is private enough] and she said that she didn’t know. I looked down the driveway towards the road, and I saw my car going down there. With the little boy at the wheel!

He hadn’t wanted to go to the toilet, he had been sent in to get the key to the car. He raided my pocket and didn’t bother to tell his half-sister that he had the key, here it is. He unlocked the car himself, started the motor with the car in gear, and drove off. I saw the car moving, and I ran. Oh, how I ran. My house fronts onto a very busy road in a medium-sized city. I could see a very nasty end to the day, but I was going to do my best to prevent that nasty end from happening.

I ran down the driveway and got the driver’s door open, went for the handbrake, and discovered that it was fully applied [parking brake, emergency brake for non-Australians] I had to get in, but the fence and the car were too close to one another for me to be able to do that. The car came out of the drive, allowing the driver’s door to open enough for me to get in. Little boy had opened the front passenger’s door so that he could abandon ship. Coward!

I got my inboard foot onto the brake in time to stop movement, but the open door brushed the power pole at the side of my driveway, closing it on my outboard leg. The pain was indescribable, but the bones held together.

So there I was, in boxer shorts only, with a screaming pain in my right leg. And the freaking Thais in the back yard were not interested in anything but comforting the little boy who had caused all of this mmm... ‘problem’.

I locked the car where it was and hobbled back into the house, where I phoned my brother. I happen to be the only person in my household who has a valid driver’s licence, so my brother had to come and move my car back up the driveway. My brother also happens to be a lawyer, and in later conversation with him, he told me that if the car had got onto the road and was hit by another car, the legal implications would have cost a lot for whoever told the little boy to get the key to my car.

Thais just don’t understand things like that, and I am hobbling around while they think it’s funny that I have a limp.

This event probably lasted only about 5 seconds, but I saw my life flashing in front of my eyes then and there. It's only going to cost $450 to get the door of the car fixed.

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