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Herb Benham: Watching daughter's car sail down embankment not good for dad's peace of mind
| Monday, Aug 4 2008 10:57 AM
Last Updated: Monday, Aug 4 2008 1:57 PM
Recently I watched my daughter — my one and only, I tell her when I’m trying to warn her how dangerous the world is — sail off Truxtun Extension and hurtle down the dirt bank near Mohawk Street.
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She survived. She’s fine. Not a scratch.
However, her father aged another a couple of years. I look like a mummy. All I need is a pyramid and a stone bear to ward off the evil spirits.
The only way to describe it was surreal. It was like those movies we used to watch in college where everybody ends up on the beach the next morning and no one knows how they got there.
I was behind Katie, driving in the truck. She was in her Jetta when, all of the sudden, she swerved as if to avoid something, overcorrected and then disappeared over the dirt bank.
The swerving was disquieting, the disappearing thing more disquieting still.
No. That’s the first thing that went through my head. No, that didn’t just happen.
That’s my daughter. My only daughter. I am deep in boys, but the inventory is pretty light on the girls side.
In a few seconds, I had pulled over to the side of the road close to where she had disappeared. Miraculously, her car had not flipped over, it had fishtailed and stopped a few yards away from a chain link fence that surrounded an oil rig.
No one thinks their children are great drivers. We’ll take fair and we don’t always get that. However, when your daughter goes over the edge, what you’re looking for is alive.
She was shaken up, teary but alive.
Concern turned to irritation. How had that happened? Staying on the road is one of those things you usually take for granted.
Moments later, a cop car rolled up with an Officer Kroeker in it. I explained what happened. As with most people who have just had one of their kids’ lives roll in front of them, I did so in such a way that I’m sure he thought I was insane or close to it. I poured out a lot of information in a short period of time.
“Do you know Byron Kroeker?” I said. “He’s my neighbor.”
I was looking for common ground and there is nothing more common than neighbor talk.
“Is he from Shafter?” he asked.
I think so. Aren’t all the Kroekers?
Fifteen minutes later, I was waiting for a tow truck so he could tow her car from the soft sand in which it was stuck. That’s who I am. Mr Waiting for a Tow Truck to Arrive.
While I stood there with the sun beating down on my head, I remembered what people had said about the difference between little kids and big kids. Big kids, big problems; little kids, little problems. The one thing they have in common is the problems part.
Given the outcome, this was one problem I was happy to have.
Opinions expressed are those of Herb Benham, not The Californian.