| One Of Those Days |
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| Written by Clare Kennedy | |
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Clare Kennedy reflects on a very... memorable day. My son Paddy has beady eyes. If anyone is going to find a lost item, it's him. He's a scavenger, always picking up discarded objects. One perfectly sunny day, I was pushing my daughter Bridget's pram, walking the boys home from school, when Paddy (then five years old), spied a lump of concrete. He picked it up, tested its weight (as small boys do) and then heaved it to the ground. I had visions of the thing landing on his foot and having to spend the next six hours in casualty. If only... Every now and then, a series of seemingly disconnected events converge, changing the course of history forever. As fate would have it, a four-wheel drive careered down the road at precisely the same moment the lump of concrete hit a root on the nature strip. The concrete exploded. Bang! The four-wheel drive screeched to a halt. A red-faced man with bulging biceps leapt out. He charged towards me and the kids, gesticulating madly. "Did you see what your [insert rude word] kid just did?" Red as a cricket ball and sick in the guts, I heaved my pram and wide-eyed Bridget over the verge and scrambled to inspect the damage. There was a dent on the car door and a scar in the black paint. Joe, then seven years old, piped up: "Mum, that's Pip's dad. Pip's in my class." It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in our faces. Pip's dad and I stared at each other, appalled. We exchanged addresses and politely said goodbye. As he drove off, Joe observed, "Lucky that rock didn't hit their grandma." That's when I noticed the white-haired woman strapped in the front seat, her window wound down. But the day wasn't over yet. I sent Paddy to his room to contemplate his actions. After 20 minutes, I sent Joe in to fetch him. Paddy was huddled under the doona and refused to show his face. As brothers do, Joe jumped on Paddy's doona. Paddy took offence and the boys started wrestling. When I entered the bedroom, I found a scene fit to curl my hair. Joe was howling, his mouth streaming blood, whereas Paddy, his face stricken, was frantically looking for something under the bed. "My tooth!" yelled Joe, "Where's my tooth?" My husband arrived home to find me huddled in the kitchen, trying to stem the blood flow. Paddy was bawling his eyes out. Joe's baby tooth, which had been hanging by a thread all day, had been knocked out in the fray. Meanwhile, Bridget waddled in, holding aloft her full and reeking nappy. "Look! Look!" she shrieked. "I did it!" You know in those romantic movies when lovers run in slow motion towards each other? Well, it was like that, but not, as my husband and I sprinted towards Bridget and watched helplessly as the contents of her nappy slid to the kitchen floor. Later - when the kitchen floor had been disinfected, the tooth found and ensconced in a glass for the tooth fairies, and the children tucked safely in bed - my husband asked sweetly, "So, how was your day?" I replied, "Well... it was memorable." |
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