Mythical wife, the girls and I went to the Asian market the other day. When we were on our way out, #1 got a little ahead of us, and began crossing the street on her own. Mythical wife managed to get her attention to stop and come back and that she knows the rule that, hands held when in the parking lot. No sooner than she got a hold of her hand, a Lexus SUV came flying into our periphery, before coming to a stop, maybe 2-3 feet away from mythical wife and #1; but adjacent to them.
Had both of them been 2-3 further into the crosswalk, they would have been hit and run over, entirely. Me yelling out HEY to the reckless driver wouldn’t have done anything to stop them.
Naturally, justifying the stereotype of being some of the most unsafe drivers in the world, it was an older Korean woman, maybe a few years younger than my mom, who was driving the car. She looked up at us with shock and concern in her face, pantomiming bowing her head in apology at her neglectful driving, and I gave her a stare that I wish could induce death, for the danger she potentially could have put my family in because she was probably too busy checking fucking KakaoTalk on her fucking phone instead of paying attention to the road in one of the most attention-requiring zones there could be, directly in front of a grocery store.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and ironically it was a good lesson for my kids to learn at the very real dangers of parking lots, since up to this point they bemoaned having to hold a grown-up’s hand every now and then, and wanted to flex moar independence that only kids of this age can.
It wasn’t really until we were driving home did it really start to sink in to me at just how fortunate we were that nothing happened. Like I said, #1 was extremely close to getting hit by a car, and frankly I don’t know how I’d have reacted if that actually did happen. More than likely I’d have wanted to kill the ajumma behind the wheel who was responsible for it, but I was playing the scene in my head where I struggled to curse and scream at someone in my elementary-level Korean.
I’ve seen my child in hospital care and with tubes and all sorts of apparatuses attached to them. I am in no rush to ever have see such again, and I don’t know how I’d handle it if I had to, against all of our wills.
Needless to say, I was quite rattled by the whole situation, and by the time I got home, I had decided it was probably for the best not leave the house any more for the day. No matter how much we try to protect our children from the very real dangers of the world, it’s like at any given point, it’s always just that close, at any given moment.
