Last weekend, I declared: ” I’m a bit on edge at the moment.” It was a statement made to remind myself just how precarious life is and how we must not be complacent about safety…
The incident that prompted this heightened sense of our own mortality involved Boy Seymour, two hot air balloons and a window.
Suffice to say, he fell out.
This came just after a friend posted a facebook meme, tagging me, highlighting just how much I worry about things. It was a graphic showing a big circle (“Things I worry about“) inside which was a smaller circle (“Things that can happen”) inside which was a dot (“Things that do happen”).
Well, the result is that I now have a whole other scary scenario in my head, involving a new graphic, incorporating all the things that I haven’t yet worried about that could actually happen, because I certainly didn’t envisage the shed window flying like a magic carpet out of its frame with Boy, like a scrawny Aryan Aladdin, riding it through the air.
Silly me.
My poor friend, who was just trying to ease my permanently addled mind with a bit of reassurance, has managed to do no such thing, and her post merely confirmed to me that I don’t worry enough!
Oh that Boy! He really does scare me. Because the window ride is not an isolated incident. He’s the one who broke his leg on Horsham’s delightfully awful Shelley Fountain. He’s the one who secretly posted a plastic Easter egg up his nose and had to have it removed three months later. And he’s the one who, on Sunday, when we went as a family tribe to watch Number One in her fabulous school play, started choking on a Tesco’s midget gem during a number entitled “Death is Just Around the Corner”.
(I know, Morticia! I know!)
Thankfully I didn’t have to deploy the Heimlich Manoeuvre, but I was poised, ready and completely couldn’t have cared less that we were in the middle of Act Two. Especially because the rest of the play was essentially lost to me, as I was too busy visualizing whether my Heimlich would have worked or not, and how I’d have got the right angle to wallop him effectively if the need had arisen.
I do have to count my blessings though, that we don’t live near a large cave system. You can bet that, if we did, my son would find himself stuck in it, just like those amazing Thai boys. In the light of the Tham Luang saga, when I told him NEVER TO GO IN A CAVE, he declared he would, with a mischievous grin on his face, and an assurance that he was an expert, as he’d done potholing at Cub Camp.
So he’s none the worse for his scrapes, with even his huge ego intact, and thankfully, all is well. Except my nerves, that is.
On a very positive note, Big Seymour has found his missing mojo! The fireplace is in, and he is incredibly excited about that. It signifies a shift in proceedings, where maybe now we are on the verge of putting the house back together again, with a view to all six of us actually living in it some day.
If I can stay out of the asylum, that is!
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