Careful with my kid!

I had written earlier about my son riding home in the ‘van’ from school and how it made me realize how fast he is growing up. I had a slightly different response when I went to pick him up the other day.

We meet the van near the airport, alongside an overpass. Most of the time the van goes under the overpass about a block in front of where we park, into a neighborhood and pops out again from a side street right near where we park. This particular day, the van driver saw me sitting there and decided to drop Clark off first.

At first thought that seems to be a nice gesture. However, the practical application of that gesture meant the driver was taking my son the wrong way against one-way traffic, weaving in and out of pedestrians and dodging scooters and cars as well as buses coming headlong at him into the bus stop through which he was driving the wrong way. All this he was doing in what amounts to little more than a overgrown soup can on wheels that would be crushed beyond recognition were it to attempt or be involved in an altercation with one of the above mentioned buses, or pedestrians, cars or scooters for that matter.

Mind you, the drivers of these school vans have always exhibited total control over their vehicles, but never the less, it was all together disconcerting to see said van lunging and weaving toward me knowing my son was inside, likely oblivious to the fact that he was in fact cheating death with every passing second.

As the seconds ticked by, feeling like an eternity in and of themselves, I winced as other vehicles came near and then deftly reacted to the not so odd fact of a vehicle driving the wrong way down the street. You see, here, it is quite a common experience.

Had this event happened in most western countries the driver would have been the subject of the nightly news for killing himself and all of his charges in the process of this escapade. But here, he is simply normal. And my son, having arrived safely at our car, was not the wiser to the stress his father had endured in the previous 15 seconds.

Maybe the best thing when things like this happen is to simply close ones eyes. And Pray!