The wind was blowing like a motherfuck while we were heading back to the car, gusting to over 45 mph (I know, because I checked when we got home--go, go, Gadget Internet!), which meant that it was all I could do to prevent our pizza from turning into a flying saucer and taking off in an uncontrolled spin up, up and away. Getting it, the lemonade, the salad, the cookie dough ("Which only costs you an extra $.01 with the family-sized pizza and salad that you are already buying," upsold the woman behind the counter), Sophie and the stuffed red plush T-rex that she insisted be brought with us all into the car without disaster took talent, luck and a prayer to Cthulhu, but we pulled it off pretty smoothly. Or so I thought, until we were doing 70mph on the freeway and heading home.
"Daddy," Sophie said from her car seat in the back. "You forgot to buckle me in."
I thought a moment. Shit, she was right. "Well, can you buckle the top one for me, honey?" She's got a pair of buckles, one that goes over her chest and shoulders, one that goes over her waist. She's learned to put the top one on and off by herself, but she can't manage the lower one yet on her own. She needs to start working out, squeezing racquetballs an hour a day or something. She'll never get to that "Connie Chung cracking walnuts with her bare hands" thing if she doesn't get started on it now.
"Sometimes little kids can do the top one," she said.* "Sometimes grownups have to do the bottom one."
We made it home in one piece, but it made me remember how my mother and grandfather drove me across the country as a baby, back before child seats, before seat belt laws, hell, almost even before cars were required to have seat belts. I rode from east to west coasts in a wicker basket, wrapped in a blanket, all Moses-ed up, and nothing bad happened to me because of it.
Okay, we did hit a patch of ice in Kentucky or Tennessee or some Hazzard County place like that, and my grandfather did manage to roll us upside-down in a ditch, and it was only sheer luck that none of us was killed or severely injured in the accident, but c'mon! Whoever hasn't been in a near-fatal car accident, raise your hand.
That's what I thought.
But I do hope that the next time I forget to strap her in, Sophie tells me before we actually hit the freeway. I do sorta kinda like her and shit, so I'd like to keep her in one piece.
*Sophie's new thing is what I call the "sometimes little kids" observation, which goes a little something like this: "Sometimes little kids get books at the library." "Sometimes little kids eat candy for dinner." "Sometimes little kids flush toilet." "Sometimes little kids fall out of bed."
Sometimes Daddy thinks it's really cute.
