This incident happened one night as Mummy and I were getting in a taxi. We approach the car and the little boy who was in the back seat gets out and goes around to his dad on the other side, his mother cussing at him to get back in the car. So we get in anyway, and then the father gets in and I think he was preparing to let the boy sit on his lap when the car suddenly moves forward. And stops on the little boy’s foot. What ensued was one of those five second moments that feel like an eternity, with everyone yelling – from the gas station attendant to the little’s boy’s dad to the little boy. And the mother? Sits there calm as you please, muttering that she did tell him fi no go out ina di firs plies.

When the car finally comes off the boy’s foot maybe ten seconds later, the dad is cussing up a blue storm, waving the kid’s shoe all over the place, getting up in the mom’s face, and generally being kind of horrible to people. At the time, I mostly wanted him to shut up with the bad words, because the kid was fine beyond the initial, what, five minutes of crying. And because angry bad words feel like a prickly bug crawling up my ear and dying a painful death.

But on reflection, the guys was probably just scared for his kid and really upset (obviously) that he was hurt. And despite the way he acted on that, that’s exactly the kind of protectiveness you like to see in parents these days.

Pax.