Let me tell you about the park catastrophe today… the weather was soooo nice today. It was really sunny and warm enough for just a long sleeve shirt, so Morgan suggested that we take our children to a small park in the compound, just a short walk away. What could it hurt, right? It would be nice for the kids to get out and about, take a nice little walk and play for a little bit instead of being cooped up on such a nice day… well I was wrong – though when it comes to children, you really cannot predict anything.
For starters, I was a nervous wreck walking there. Sidewalks are janky; sometimes there is not a side walk to walk on, or there are holes in the middle, and cars park on the sidewalk so half the time, so my children were walking in the road. Can I remind you again about the crazy driving here?? But I will get to that. So we made it to the park, and it was neat. It had different things that we don’t have at the school playground – swings, a merry-go-round, and teeter-totters. The downfall was that it is all metal. Just about all playgrounds that I have seen are all metal. I just about never see plastic or wood, which seems safer to me (less painful).
So anyway, my kids were playing and having a really great time running all over the place. Ok, picture this merry-go-round thing. It was not just a circle that spun around, but picture more of an octopus-looking thing with a middle point and arms going out with little seats at the end of each arm, all metal… ok, so you have a picture right? The kids loved it. There were only 6 seats, so the other kids would stand on the outside or push it around while counting until they switched turns (self-management problem solving at its finest). Johann discovered that you could push it really fast if he pushed from the inside of the arms – really cleaver. The only problem was that when he got tired and wanted to stop, he tried to run out of the middle, but was hit but the next arm and was knocked down and started to cry. At this point he was the third child to be hit by this spinning calamity.
I was holding Johann, trying to comfort him, when I noticed that Taka was doing the exact same thing but had it spinning really fast. I was walking very swiftly over to tell them again that they could not push it that way, when Taka saw me and stopped. The next arm swing around and hit him in the back of the legs, flipping him over. Then he sat right up from the ground and the next arm smacked him right in the bridge of his nose… It was like a scene out of a movie in slow motion as I ran in slow motion yelling his name. I flew so fast, practically throwing Johann out of my arms before yanking Taka out of the middle and stopping it from spinning and hitting him, yet again. He did not even cry, but his nose started gushing blood. Can you even imagine being smacked in the nose with a thick metal pole?
Luckily we had tissues with us, but that was it (although, remember blood is nothing here – they would not have even made him wash his hands when we got back if I didn’t tell him to). Shortly after that, we headed back. Again, I was a wreck as I tried to make sure all of my kids stayed out of the road and out of the way of cars as they drove by. At one point, we were walking across the street in front of a parked car when the driver got in and started to go WITH MY KIDS STILL WALKING ACROSS THE STREET! Really? I mean, he couldn’t have waited an extra 5 seconds for a couple four year olds to get out of the way before he started inching in their direction? I wanted to scream at him! When the kids saw the car, they screamed and started to scatter, and I put myself in front of the car, trying to grab them all. OMG, just about gave me a heart attack!
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