When Paul (on the right) was about eight years old, he made his teacher laugh with something he wrote. They were learning words ending in "ight" and had to make sentences using them. Paul wrote:
"My mom and dad never fight."
"My mom is always right."
Isn't that just adorable?
Billy, on the other hand, used to alarm his teachers (and us). I was called to the school many times because Billy had banged his head doing something daring and had to be taken to hospital for a check. Concussion was a regular ocurrence.
He managed to get into some kind of trouble very often. In Brazil, when he was eleven, he managed to go through the roof of a milking shed. He wasn't injured, but very shaken. Then he made a ramp for bike stunts and tried it with a bike that had slightly flat tyres. Following an almighty tumble, we had to rush him to hospital with an enormous gash on his thigh. While he was being stitched, with all of us in the room, the nurses had to abandon Billy to see to Paul, who had passed out.
When they were teenagers, back in England, they came across a baseball bat and decided to go to a local park for a practice. Baseball is not an English game, so they didn't have much of a clue. The practice didn't last very long. While swinging the bat, Paul cracked Billy's forehead open. More stitches...
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| The pub where Paul worked |
A few years later, Paul was working at a nearby pub and used to ride his bike to work. I received a phone call from his cellphone, but from a stranger. Paul had a close encounter with a tree and this kind stranger had stopped to help. My car was in for some repairs, so I grabbed my first aid kit and rushed to the spot on foot. When I arrived, completely breathless, there was an ambulance. Paul had injured his elbow and a devastatingly handsome paramedic greeted me with a laugh: "Good job you brought your first aid kit, we didn't have one!" I didn't know the stranger had called an ambulance, but the humour was very reassuring. Paul had a fractured elbow, but was otherwise OK.
There are many other stories, not all of them about disasters. They will have to wait for another post...