stories from long ago

Kelly and I were reminded of a story yesterday.  I was about 8, she was maybe 6. My parents owned a manual Chrysler minivan.  We were parked in a parking lot and my parents were talking to an old friend, a postman.  The postman's truck was parked behind our van and he was leaning against it catching up with my parents.

Kelly was told she could turn on the car to listen to the radio, so she turned the key.  The car, without the clutch and brake on, lurched forward then back, slamming into the postmans truck behind us.  It narrowly missed pinning the postman between our van and his truck.  He had jumped out of the way just in time.

I don't remember any major damage to the vehicles, but I remember thinking of how serious it could have been.

Also when I was maybe fourish I almost choked Kelly to death.  It was an old VW bug with manual windows and door locks.  The windows were hard to unroll and the door locks were just as hard to unlock.

I had somehow rolled the window up with her head outside the car and her body inside the car.  Everytime I tried to unroll it, it wouldn't unroll and I just kept rolling it up tighter and tighter on her neck. Fortunately at the time, Kelly was a fairly loud person, and could yell at just the right pitch to get my mom to come running.  The car doors were locked (of course since Kelly and I had been playing in it) I couldn't get them unlocked to let my mom in to help.  I went back and forth a few times trying to unroll the window (meaning rolling Kelly's neck up tighter) and trying to unlock the door when finally my mom was able to get in and unroll the window.  Kelly didn't choke too badly that day but she did end up with a skinny neck.

Memories...  lots of things are coming to mind. ; )

Kelly can do just about anything she sets her mind to.  And if she doesn't want to do it, and you make her she can make you wish you hadn't.  Someday ask me about the time my mom told her to clean up her own on purpose throw up....

ok  back to the memory - My sister is athletic as an adult.  She can do more pullups than most men, runs marathons, dances, spins, but as a 5th graders she was chubby and ackward.  I loved to ice skate and it must have been my birthday or something and I had convinced my parents to take us ice skating. 

Kelly and ice skating was not a good mix.  She did not want to go.  Eventually someone must have told her to stop being a baby and go ice skate becauseey they had already paid for it.  Out on the ice she went, being drug by my mother the whole time because she couldn't/wouldn't move a single foot by herself.  She had made it almost half way around when she went down and my mother ice skated over her hand.  End of birthday ice skating trip.  Kelly won.  The ice arena had to fill out an incident report.