Hello Moto

Saturday morning Patrick and Amariah had hair cut. Amariah cried the whole time. I felt bad for him so we went and bought him an ice cream cone afterward. We walked along the sidewalk as Amariah ate his ice cream.  We came to a place where there were steps and a wheel chair access ramp leading up from the sidewalk to a second sidewalk lined with shops. Amariah found it entertaining to walk up and down the wheel chair ramp. As he paused at the top of the ramp to get a good lick of his ice cream, a motorcycle had rode up on to the sidewalk and started up the wheelchair ramp, well, at least I thought that it was a wheel chair ramp. For all I know, it could actually be made for motorcycles, but really it looks like the same thing that we would call a wheelchair ramp in Canada.  The motorcyclist saw Amariah and as a result had lowered both his feet to the ground on either side of the bike and began walking his bike up the ramp. Amariah had yet to notice this machine inching its way toward him. But who can blame him for not noticing, sometimes ice cream can be so delicious that the world around us seems to fade away and all we are aware of is our self and the ice cream. Amariah was in one of these ice cream consumed moments.

 

I was shouting at him the whole time to move out of the way, but due to his ice cream moment he failed to hear me.  I couldn’t rush up there and grab Amariah because there wasn’t enough room on the ramp for both the motorcycle and me, yet I wasn’t overly worried because I could see that the motorcyclist saw Amariah and was taking caution. Even still I kept yelling, “Amariah, move out of the way!”

 

Amariah finally came out of his ice cream moment but it wasn’t my voice that brought him back to reality, it was the revving of the moto’s engine. Part way up the ramp the moto driver revved the engine to keep the bike from stalling. The loud unexpected revving sent Amariah running in the opposite direction of the ramp. When Amariah felt he was at a safe distance away he turned around so quickly that the ice cream cone held in his hand was launched from the paper wrapping and sent flying through the air and landed on the ground some distance away. Near by people who saw the whole thing shared their sympathy with the sound of “Ohhhhh…” The moto stopped at the top of the ramp and also shared his sympathies.

 

Amariah ran to the ice cream, picked it up and intended on continuing enjoying it when I intervened by grabbing it from him. I explained that the ice cream was now dirty and that it can’t be eaten. He looked up at me with his puppy dog eyes, completely disappointed and began to cry. My heart went out to him. I caved, and I went and bought him another ice cream. He was once again happy, and so were Patrick and I. Who would have thought that our son would have lost his ice cream because he was scared that he would get run over by a motorcycle on a wheelchair ramp. That’s China.