Left Out

I always got left places as a kid.  At church, the mall, the beach…  Pretty much anywhere.  And it’s not that my family doesn’t love me (I think), but it's more a natural consequence of being caught in the middle of 7 kids: you’re bound to get forgotten from time to time, maybe even routinely.  But who’s keeping track, really?  Certainly not this "well-rounded" middle child.

In the earliest part of my childhood, my parents shuttled their children around in a white 1970's VW microbus.  It was always a mad dash to get everyone into the van and out of the driveway to make it somewhere on time.  Which we almost never executed successfully (making it anywhere on time).

One quick caveat:  I am not sure if my parents were unconvinced of the merit of child safety seats, or if this was simply the era before child safety seats became mandatory and ubiquitous.  Regardless, my parents used to sit me atop a brown, plastic box to soak up the slack in the seat belt around my small waist.  [My adult self (pre-kids) consequently assumed that rear-facing car seats were unnecessary and were for pussies. As a parent, I am zealot for car seats.]

Anyways, it was a Sunday morning when--in the chaos of everyone frantically piling into the van for church--I was forgotten from the seating frenzy and elected to ride on the bumper.  To this day, I remember the buildup very clearly:  I looked into the van, saw that my brown booster seat was missing, and stoically resigned myself to the obvious fact that I would have to ride to church on the bumper.  Problem was, the rest of my family was too busy packing bodies into the car to notice 2-yr old me climbing into position on the rear bumper.

 
You should be asking “what the hell did you hold onto??”  Great question.  The back door of a VW microbus does not offer much of a handhold, but rather a small lip protruding below the keyhole, perhaps big enough to support a single adult finger or maybe 2 small fingers... say, of a 2 yr old.  And that’s what I held onto.  For dear life.  Pictured below is an actual VW Microbus latch assembly for reference.

The rest of the story is sort of a blur to me.  Most likely because I was SCARED SHITLESS, CLINGING FOR DEAR LIFE TO A TINY LATCH ON THE BACK OF A VAN THAT WAS DRIVING DOWN A MAJOR THOROUGHFARE.  I have pieced together the remaining details with help from my parents and sisters.  Supposedly, after driving some distance down the busy road, one of my sisters finally noticed my absence and raised the alarm.  At this point, my dad, who was navigating the van, looked in the rearview mirror and saw a giant pair of eyes peeking in just above the rim of the rear window.  My mom then sprang into action and pulled me into the car.  And somehow I survived the rest of my childhood and am here today to laugh about it.

If my 2 year old memory was correct, we didn’t make it much more than 1/10 of a mile down the road before I was discovered.  However, as most good stories have a tendency to grow and swell over time, it is sometimes told that I survived on that bumper for a full 2 hours during hurricane conditions!  One fact that isn’t debated at all among my family, and is also my favorite detail of the whole ordeal: no one else on the road that day tried to honk or wave or otherwise make any kind of attempt to alert my parents that a child was surfing the rear bumper.  Seriously.

Rare photo-op of the family (plus a few randoms) in front of the VW Microbus... me staring at my toes was not that rare.

 

VW Microbus, "au naturel."

 

Not sure what's more concerning: my shorts or the missing booster seat.