incognito |
It’s an astonishing fact that there are now about seven billion
people inhabiting this planet. That’s seven thousand million of us! And what’s
the most amazing thing about this – other than that there are an awful lot of
people having an awful lot of sex? Well, it’s that every single, solitary, one
of those seven billion people had, from the age of next to nothing until at
least 4, an uncontrollable urge to try to kill themselves! How on earth did we
reach seven billion when every single kid on the planet seems to have been born
with a death wish?
Take young Marty as an example. In the early days, when an
inability to move much tended to cramp his style, he would contentedly dice
with death with mundane acts such as choking on his own vomit or trying to eat
his pillow. However, once he’d learnt to move, a world of opportunities for an
early demise where his to grab... or suck, or poke, or eat.
Put him in a room filled with soft, cuddly, perfectly safe
toys and he would, within minutes, be throwing Tigger and his sidekicks aside and
making a bee-line for the electrical socket in the corner of the room where, if
left to his own devices, he would spend the morning trying to get the cover off
so he could electrocute himself in spectacular fashion.
From the very moment he learnt to walk it became clear that
his sole aim was to go as fast as he possibly could. This achieved, stage two was
to go as fast as he possibly could into wholly immovable objects. Not a week
has gone by where he has not been sporting at least one enormous bruise.
We recently returned from our summer holiday – We went to
Wales so treat the word ‘summer’ in its loosest possible sense. On the very
first day Marty managed to almost knock himself out by running head long into
the dining table, a collision that resulted in him sporting an enormous black
eye for the whole of the holiday.
Not content with concussion he diligently went to work on
the gas fire – which, despite being a ‘family’ caravan home, didn’t actually
have a fire guard. We spent hours building elaborate barricades around the fire
and Marty spent hours trying to thwart our defences. On the last day of our
stay, whilst his parents were busy packing everything into the car, he finally
broke through and achieved his holiday goal – he got burnt!
As I write I can hear the battle going on between him and
his mum; she wants to cook dinner, he wants to climb into the oven! I tell you
now, if we all followed young Marty’s guide to health and safety there should
be no more than about 20 of us on this planet... and 9 of those would be in
hospital at any one time.
No comments:
Post a Comment