Driving home the lesson

My father spent a great deal of time on the road with the job he had when I was a little girl. He worked out of a small office with a core group of drillers in Dieppe, New Brunswick. Often he would go on site visits around the province or meet with clients throughout Atlantic Canada. Occasionally my sister, two years my senior, and I would go with him for the ride.

Looking back on these adventures now I realize it was likely to take our energy off my mother's hands and give her time to breathe. Raising four kids within a five year range is no simple task and they really did make it a team effort; especially when it came to teaching us lessons. My father was always more of the talker than Mum. My dad had a way with stories... the little glimmer in his eye before he told the hook-line. He would look at you in excited anticipation to see if you knew where the joke or lesson was heading. He has a song or a story for everything. It was rare to hear the same story more than once; except for one particular tale that we heard almost every time we buckled into the car.

My father is also a man of safety. Having worked on the drill sites and travelling the big rigs he had seen a lot over the years. Without fail, on a beautiful, sunny, summer day we would get into the company truck and roll down the windows. Driving 120 km/h down the highway it was so tempting to stick our arms out the window and have our tiny hands ride the wave of air as we pierced through it at what felt like race-car speeds. But, every time we would sneakily try to stick our arms out the window we heard the same thing...

“Hey!” He would almost shout. “Get your arm back inside the truck,” he would say this as his arm swung at us like it would make us that much more inclined to oblige. “You know, I was working with a man one time and he was always in the trucks. He was on the road between jobs weekly and had a nasty habit of leaving his arm out the window.” My father would tell us, every time, as if it was the first time. “Now this guy was just riding along in the passenger seat one day with his arm flailing about and --” This is the part that he would always clap his hands together and our eyes would widen. “Tore right off,” he would say in disbelief. “A bulldozer blade zipped right passed and tore his arm right off.”

At a young age the very idea was gory and traumatic enough to visualize, let alone anticipate actually happening, that I would keep my appendages securely in the vehicle. The scare tactic was a good one and every time I heard the tale I would shrink back in my seat thinking how horrible that must have been for my dad's co-worker. Looking out on the beautiful, sunny, summer day I could hardly imagine something so horrific.

To this day, when the window is rolled down low and the fresh air billows through the open space, my arms will hardly travel outside the window, staying safely behind the side mirrors. If it happens to creep out passed the safety of the mirror my heart has a little panic and I instantly envision the sad fate of my father's coworker.

Lesson learned, Dad.