“Mama! Mama! There was a terrible accident! Squirt…fire truck. Under the car. He fell. It was horrible, Mama! Terrible. Squirt bleeding a lot. Fire-truck. Was a terrible accident, Mama!”.
That was what I heard at the end of the line as I did my usual recently-established routine of calling the kids before their bedtime for a natter to tell them either I’ll be working late or that I’ll be coming home soon. Hearing those words, I had WTF! zooming past my head at 200 km/hour. Is this for real? What’s going on!
As Spud rattled on and me trying not to freak out, I heard Silver Bullet’s voice in the background,” Wait… wait wait…give me the phone. You are exaggerating. Let me speak to Mama”
Then Spud went, “But Papa! It was a terrible accident!”
Silver Bullet: “ Let me speak to Mama. Don’t scare your mother like that”
By then, my heart was racing. I did not know what to think, but Silver Bullet’s voice didn’t sound terrifying. But then again, unlike me, he usually has a calmer head even when he was about to hit a cement truck!
As soon as Silver Bullet took over the phone, he explained to me that it was not anywhere near as horrible as how Spud had described it. Yes, Squirt had a little bit of an accident. Yes, he had fell off his car. While at that, slipped onto one of his small cars and then went a-tumbling into his fire-truck toy chest. When he fell into his toy chest, he banged his mouth and his lips hard into the edge of that toy- chest. [Ouch!] His lips bled and swelled up real bad. All this happened at home, and we know that Squirt tends to harvest worms and ants in his pants.
So, now that THAT was clarified, it didn’t sound so bad after all. But, mind you! That little unexpected outburst over a phonecall did scare the crap out of me. I mean, words like “accident”, “fire-truck”, “Squirt under the car”, “horrible”…all used in the same sentence! WTF.
In the scheme of things, it was funny. I only came home to a boy with lips looking like it had undergone lips implant. The offending car and fire-truck still intact. Absolutely nothing to worry about.
Yes kids, please do not scare your mother like that. Not with those words, and never, I repeat, NEVER over the phone! Not like that.
