Repeat performance

I am not sure of the exact statistics on this, but I am pretty sure the chances of having a car flip over in front of your house twice in a lifetime are probably pretty slim.  However, it just happened to us tonight for the 2nd time (the first time was in Port Coquitlam in January '99).

Roy & the kids were in the playroom keeping themselves busy while I quickly got dinner ready, and all of a sudden, I heard a big screech of tires followed by a crashing sound.  I yelled for Roy to look out the window and sure enough, there was a car "upseedown" (as Riley says it!) right out front.  Roy ran outside and I quickly called 911.

Roy was one of the first people out there, but lots of other cars and a city bus stopped to help out, too (we were really impressed with how helpful and genuinely concerned everyone was).  And this is where Roy's repeat performance comes in - for the second time in his life, he got to rip the jammed driver's door open (in POCO he ripped the thing right off - oops!) to help the driver out of the car (oh, how I wish I had a video of both of these incidents!).  Luckily the driver was not hurt and was able to get out and stand and walk around while waiting for the emergency vehicles to arrive.

At first the kids were a bit confused watching Roy tugging doors open, having me on the phone with 911, and seeing all sorts of people stopping and walking all over in front of the house.  Oh, and you know, seeing a car with it's wheels in the air!  Leighton said his heart was racing and he was scared at first but that he got his bunny and felt better.  Riley (uncharacteristically!) listened really well and just sat quietly on the front porch with Leighton until I was able to talk to her and get her.  Once we were both able to talk to them and explain things to them and they saw everything was okay, they were really keen to watch the tow truck flip the car over!  I got a photo of them watching and of the emergency vehicles, but somehow it seemed wrong to photograph the flipped over car after I saw some other people stopping to do that.  We felt so badly for the driver because he (understandably) seemed really shaken up.

I am really glad Roy was already home because I can't imagine how worried he would have been to get home to have all the emergency vehicles out front and the road closed down (kind of like how confused all our friends were in '99 when they were trying to get to our house to meet up to go out to celebrate Roy's birthday and they had to park far away and walk to the house to see what was going on).