Dummy Run

Wife had to work in London today so I had to take charge of the nursery run. As expected the little ones were far from cooperative at the start of the day but after a lot of persuasion and a little bit of shouting we were off and running only a little late.

The roads were busy with the school run and about half way there I noticed something strange on the otherside of the road. It was the head of a lady behind a car who seemed to be sitting on what must have been a very wet pavement. Her head dipped out of view behind the car but then popped back up looking quite upset.

So I ventured over the road with my buggy of little ones to investigate. The lady, who had now had got to her feet, was leaning on her little boy in the back of the car clearly in pain. I asked her the stupid question of are you ok and she told me that she had gone over on her foot on the pavement and now could not put any weight on it. I could see her ankle was already quite swollen.

We talked through her options of getting more comfortable and getting help and getting her son to school but I dont think she was taking much in really due to pain. In the end she realised she had a friend who lived just over the busy road so she called her. I had a bit of a chat with the ladies son in the car to make sure he was fine and he seemed more interested in telling me about the fall he had had on his bike that that of his Mums injury. After discussing the merits of cycle helmets with him and suggesting that his Mum should get one to wear for the school run (she was not that amused) I said that I and the little ones would stay with her till the ladies friend arrived.

Moments later her friend was on hand in her slippers and dressing gown and we set about a plan to get the injured one into the house across the busy road with me and the buggy whilst her friend behind us would bring the boy over. A van was not too close but coming so we decided to wait as we were not going to be quick crossers. At this point a small girl in her pyjamas appeared out of a house on the other side of the road. Her dressing gowned mum told her to stay right there, which she did for a moment before running out into the road happily.

Thankfully the van was not going too fast so I told the injured lady to stay with my kids as I ran out to the girl. The girl who suddenly saw a big bald man running at her with arms out to grab her quickly turned and, rather frightened, ran back out of the road to the pavement by her house where her panted brother had now appeared. I told them not to move and went back for the others.

It was at this point the van driver started having a go at me about the kids being in the road. I shouted something at him and pointed to the injured lady. He then behaved a bit and let me walked the injured lady across the road whilst other road users beeped at him and us. As injured then kept herself stable with the wall and hopped into the house I got the buggy and the little ones along with (a very apologetic) dressing gowned and the boy from the other side and we all crossed the road safely.

When I reported back our morning adventure to Wife I earned some Dad points as she was pleased that I had shown the little ones the importance of helping people. She is right it is important, especially considering a lot of others happily ambled past us whilst it had all been going on.

I had no idea that the nursery run was so stressful, no wonder Wife is always late. Annoyingly I was too.

So at pick up I made sure I was early. A bit too early in fact so I popped round the corner to a strange junk shop for a couple of minutes. In the showroom I was amazed to find half of the room filled with bits of old shop mannequins. Apparently the shop owner once spend two hours trying to put them all together but then realised he had a lot more limbs than bodies so gave up.

Anyway we took a different much quieter route home and talked about the moon.