Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Day I Almost Killed my Nephew

We were visiting at Connie's around Easter, 1985.  This was when they lived in River Heights.  They had ride in cars for the boys.  They also had three wheelers.  The weather was pretty good.  Matt was about four, almost five at the time.  Where we were visiting I wasn't sure how things worked.  Matt was sitting on a three wheeler that had been started.  He decided to go for a spin.  I didn't see any problem with it.  (Not being familiar with three-wheelers and kids it didn't dawn on me this was not a good thing.  They rode the battery operated cars frequently; but I must admit the three-wheeler was quite a bit faster.)
Matt got going OK, but he was going fast.  It didn't take me long to realize Matt didn't know how to slow the thing down.  He took off across their back yard and weaved back and forth driving like someone who had too much to drink. 
Matt had some concept of steering and took a serpentine route through the back yard.  I made sort of a help attempt to stop him, but when Kelly saw him he made a bigger attempt, running all out across the field to catch up with him.  He had almost caught Matt when he got to the other end of the field, which was a fence lined with trees.  Matt mad an attempt to turn, and in fact turned the vehicle almost 90 degrees; right into a tree.  The tree stopped him fast, and he flew off the seat of the three-wheeler and into the branches which cushioned his stop.  Kelly was mad for a second and started to yell, but then stopped.  We were just lucky Matt hadn't hurt himself. 

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