An Emergency Safety Check
Wednesday - August 09, 2006
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Del.icio.usEditor’s note: Ron Nagasawa is on vacation. This column was originally published on March 22, 2000.
Do you ever get into the “doubt zone”? It’s when you’re about to do something and for a split-second you know it’s going to go wrong, but you go ahead and do it anyway. That stuff happens to me 24/7 and I still haven’t learned to heed that mental warning.
I’m a stickler for safety, especially when it concerns my family. Whenever we go anywhere in the family car, our 10-year-old son is strapped in the back seat as is our 2-year-old daughter.
Our daughter requires that my wife sits next to her car safety seat, so I kind of look like the Nagasawa chauffeur. That’s OK with me because I know the back seat is the safest spot in the car.
The other weekend after an outing with the family, I wanted to stop in at City Mill to pick up some supplies for a home project I’m working on.
Our daughter was asleep, so my wife said that she and our son would wait with her in the car. It was a hot day, so she asked that I leave the car running with the air conditioner on. I didn’t like the idea of doing that, but figured I’d only be a few minutes.
After my hardware jaunt, I walked out of the store with bags in both hands and went down the row of cars where I had parked. Suddenly and to my horror, I saw our car starting to roll backward out of the stall. The parking brake must have failed or the car slipped out of gear.
Like a madman, I threw down my bags and started running full-sprint toward the car. Through my huffing and puffing, I was yelling out, “Stop that car, stop that car!” Nearing collapse, I finally reached the car and slammed both my hands down on the trunk in an insane effort to stop it.
To my surprise it screeched to a halt, and when I looked up I saw that there was an entirely different family in the car. From the side of my eye I spotted our car, still in the same stall and right next to the open one for the car I just stopped, which, incidentally, was identical to ours.
An irate woman emerged from the car and snapped, “What’s your problem?” Looking for a quick way out of this, I pointed to her bumper and said, “Your safety inspection sticker is expired.”
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Loyal Rainbow Warrior fan Steve Tamura is cheering the UH athletics Website - news, schedules, photo gallery, plus you can purchase tickets and merchandise, and listen to music tracks such as the cool “Warrior Strut” chant.
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