I don't have any Festoy stories involving my own kids. I do have many about their involvements with much heavier equipment. The kind hat involves big trucks with trailers behind. when my son was around 3 and daughter 5, i had a garden tractor that they both liked to ride on with me. Since i had a small loader bucket mounted on the front, my son felt that tractor to be his private domain. One afternoon, I had been letting him ride on it with me. I had a phone call to which my wife alerted me and i drove up close to the house to go inside. My daughter, as soon as I had shut the machine and evacuated same, asked if she could sit on the seat while i was in the house. Of course, i allowed that it was her turn, at which point she jumped on.
You have to understand that whenever my sn rode, he was a perfect example of total concentration. He cared abut nothing in ths wrld other than the job at hand and knew every move i was going to make almost as soon as i proceeded with the action. My daughter was a different story. She would be sitting with me with not a care about where that machine was going. She was looking for anybody who might be observing. As soon as she would spot any bystander or passerby, she would be waving to them and shouting "Hie". He shouting to the neighbors was a steady stream of waving and yelling. I enjoyed both of them. i also taught safety precautions from long before they were allowed on any of my machinery. At one time, a neighbor ran over his five year old son with his backhoe and crushed him. My son was only 4 at the time and the first words out of his mouth when we told him about the neighbor child was, "He should never have walked behind the machine. Didn't his daddy teach him that?" He knew from experience that he would have been grounded immediately should he ever have walked behind any machine, truck or auto without being first recognized by the operator. He has taught his own boy the same lessons.
The particular time I started describing here, as my daughter climbed onto the tractor, young son tried telling her to get off the machine. i told him it was his sister's turn and he could cool it for a while. He didn't give me much arguement, as he knew he could be grounded for such shenanigans. He knew he had to give his sister a chance. About 30 seconds after I disappeared into the house, i heard a loud scream and dropped the phone to run out to see what had happened. David was running towards me holding his hands out in front. He was making a hell of a racket while he kept waving his hands in front of me. i could not get much of anything coherent from him, but daughter told me what had happened.
It seems that the boy was very upset that his sister had the audacity to sit on "HIS" tractor and as soon as I was out of sight, he decided to physically show his displeasure. In his show of territorial ownership, he had decided to grab a piece of the tractor and, i guess he thought he could give it a good shaking. He did not shake for long; as the appendage that appeared to be the most handy to grab onto just happened to be the very HOT exhaust pipe. [doh]
I performed the necessary first aid, but young son did not get a whole lot of sympathy from his mean old dad. As a matter of fact, one might say a little salt was added to the wound. I'm sure he did not need the followup grounding, but all in all, altho he swears he does not remember the incident, to this day, just past his 43 birthday, he has NEVER again put his hands on a hot exhaust pipe or any other hot part of any machine. And he has some pretty big equipment, the kind that digs 20 foot deep holes, trucks with all kinds of big wheels and some toys that require WIDE LOAD signs just to move onto any roadway.
Tinker
