Surviving childhood

Since our car is still in the shop with A/C issues, the dealership was incredibly nice and offered us a loaner today. It's a tiny sardine can with the fancy mane of Daewoo. My head almost touches the ceiling and we have to hold the car seats out of the way in order to buckle the seatbelts because they aren't made to accomodate the width of a carseat. There are other tiny car issues with it, so just take my word for it and never buy one of these.

We had planned a field trip to a local living history farm, so we packed ourselves into the sardine can and took off. As we were exiting the interstate, there was some commotion from behind my seat and a panicked scream from L. She had opened her car door and was trying to hold it closed, but we were on one of those curving ramps where inertia was against her. Thankfully, the sardine can is small enough that it took only about 2 seconds to figure out what was going on, reach back and pull the door closed, and lock it. I guess the kid had just had to try out all those buttons and levers on the door.

I looked back after it happened and K had started shivering. "Are you cold?" I asked.

"No, it just scared me."

The girls spent the rest of the trip to the farm having their stuffed bunnies talk about how scared they had been and "calling" various people on the toy phone to talk about it. Self-initiated play therapy. Any counselor would've been proud.