Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Bad Parent Post

Mostly I'm posting this because it must be recorded. I had a bad parent moment today. Because everyone and everything ended up unharmed, I feel there is a slight comic element to this story, so I will share.

This week Aron is at Scout Camp from 8-4. Jordan has VBS from 9-noon. Eric drops off Jordan at church on his way to school and I go pick her up during my lunch break. Except for tomorrow when Jordan has a play date in the afternoon, she spends her afternoons entertaining herself either upstairs in the house or outside with the neighbors.

Today I picked up Jordan and brought her home. She is watching Toy Story 3 in the car. And it's on this weird setting where all the visual parts are narrated.. for the blind, maybe? It does mean that while I drive I can actually kind of picture what's going on. But the setting is still weird.

Anyway, she was at a point in the movie where she wanted to stay in the car and keep watching. I was very hungry and needed to get back downstairs to work, so I parked the car in the garage, turned off the ignition to "accessories" and let her watch. She asked what to do when she was done and I said turn the key toward you and pull it out. In hindsight, this was really really NOT a good move on my part.

I heated up my leftovers and took them downstairs and got to work. About 10 minutes later Jordan comes in crying so hard, I run up to see what's wrong and she sobs: The car went backwards into Roselynn's yard and I almost died.

I ran out and found the car in the middle of the street (pointing toward our driveway).

In thinking about it after my heart started beating regularly again there is really on one explanation for how this happened:

There is the SLIGHT possibility that I didn't turn the key to accessories and left it running. If that's the case then Jordan had to put the car in reverse to get it out of the garage and across to the neighbor's yard and the in either neutral or drive to get it back out to the street.

If I DID put the car in accessories mode, then she had to turn the key first before she put it into reverse.

Either way, she is a curious little girl who believes she is capable of anything, so I really should not have left her in the position to... explore.

The only evidence of the entire event is a slight tire sized line of decreased grass across the street.

What's weird is that when I was a child, I used to have nightmares where I was in a car by myself going backwards down a hill and I didn't know how to stop the car.

Anyway, I should know better.

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