October 31, 2011

Superdog



So this happened a few years ago but since it's Halloween I'm going for a festive post. (True story though...)
We were renting a house that lived near a beach. Since it was a quite popular place, all the houses on the road were three properties deep on the beach side of the street. (Meaning three houses shared each driveway.) We were living in a 'middle' house at the time. On Halloween evening, the 'front' houses (that were next to the road) were the only houses that got trick-or-treaters. So that evening, as a result, we decided to go down to the beach as the sun was going down. That we could see, we were the only ones on the beach and we sat down on the sand dune. It seemed like it could be any fine evening, not just October 31st.
A few minutes later, a dog that was dressed up as Superman (Superdog?) appeared on the sand and sat down beside us. We've never seen this dog before and we had no sign of an owner. He just looked out to sea as we did, giving us a reminder that it still was Halloween out there.

October 16, 2011

Sticks and stones



So there was this kid who fell off his bike. (Not me for a change!) The whole neighbourhood was alerted by the vocal chord siren. Since I was already outside (and looking at him) I was nominated by my street to be the first responder. As I got closer, the cries turned into messages that he had 'a broken bone'. While not entirely coherent, he was repetitive and pretty sure about what seemed to be his knee. Crouching down, I asked him if he could move his foot. He could and did - quite easily too. I told him that because of this, that it probably wasn't broken. This is where the period of rapid healing started. I said I'd carry his bike home (two houses down) and that he could lean on me as he limped home. Although I didn't say anything, after about four steps he was pretty much 100% and I suspect it was the attention that I paid him mostly.
Kids are like that. Something hurts, often only until they are bored being hurt. And adults sometimes don't notice that they are hurt until they see blood or some other indication of injury. Maybe as you get older you start to cry in reverse order.