Great, now I'm only going to live to 102

Once upon a time, two little boys nearly gave their poor mother heart-attack. The End. (Her heart isn't recovered enough to be able to tell the tale)

ha!

We were at a local biking/jogging/walking "trail" in our area last night (paved path with yellow lines like a real road, but about the total width of one lane of a real road). Dan wanted to jog and thought Jared would enjoy getting his ride his bike with more freedom than just going in circles in the driveway at our house. I grabbed the bike trailer/jog stroller for Connor and Emily (I wanted the exercise of going at a faster pace than Connor could walk, so he was going in there, and Emily has an ear infection and wasn't feeling up to doing too much walking, so I put her in as well) and we set out.

Dan and Jared followed the trail to it's end, but I only walked halfway, then turned back, knowing Dan and Jared were going faster than me and would end up beating us back to the beginning anyway. At the point Dan and Jared were coming back and passing us, Emily and Connor asked to get out to run with them. We were within sight of the beginning, so I agreed. When they'd all reached the point where we'd originally started, Connor turned around and started running back towards me. Jared turned around at about the same time and started biking back towards me. Connor was on the far left (my left, as he was running toward me) and Jared was on the far right. It's a rather wide "trail" and I had no concerns about them both coming down the hill at the same time. But then Jared started going really fast, and Connor started running in a diagonal line towards Jared. With my heart in my throat, I opened up my mouth to yell at Dan (who was within a few paces of Connor, but turned the other way) to grab Connor, but I never got the chance. Connor ended up right in front of Jared, who had no chance in the world of stopping in time, and they went down HARD. The front tire of Jared's bike hit the back of Connor's leg and flung him belly down to the ground, and Jared launched over the handle bars, and would have gone pretty far, I think, but his legs got twisted up in the bike frame and he ended up coming down halfway on top of Connor. I don't even remember letting go of the empty stroller I was pushing (honestly lost all recollection of having been pushing a stroller in the first place, until Emily pushed it up to me a few minutes later...LOL), but suddenly I was peeling Jared up off the ground at the same time Dan was getting Connor. Both boys were in tears, but amazingly okay! Connor doesn't have a scratch or a bruise on him that we could find, and as soon as he was upright again, the tears stopped and he was on his way (I tell people all the time that he's indestructible!). Jared's head (with helmet ON and properly tightened!) hit and then whiplashed to the side where his cheek made contact with the pavement. He's SLIGHTLY bruised on the cheek bone, and the scrape wasn't even deep enough to bleed, just roughed up the skin a bit. His hip got a bit bruised and roughed up, and his legs have several bright red circles, which I suspect will be nice blue bruises when he gets up in the morning. His palms were pretty red where he landed, tried to catch himself, and skidded a bit, but no broken skin and they were normal looking by the time we'd driven home. But basically, they're both fine.

I'd been videotaping Jared riding his bike not two minutes before that crash. Knowing the outcome (they're basically fine!), I almost wish I'd still been videotaping so you could be amazed along with me at how things turned out. When I saw that bike get Connor's leg and tweak his foot funny and fling him forward, I was sure his little ankle was broken, and when I saw Jared's face slam down, I expected to see raw meat and missing teeth. Those boys hit the ground SO HARD.

We were so extremely lucky last night, and it was a good lesson for all of us. Even when they were all having a good time, we shouldn't have had an unpredictable Connor on foot running around anywhere near Jared, who is still rather new to the world of two-wheel bike riding, and Jared should probably have a bike with hand brakes (he was going so fast down the hill, I'm not convinced he had much control of the pedals to have used the pedal brakes even if he'd wanted to or had time to try). In the meantime, we'll be mindful of having him maintain a CONTROLLED speed down hills.

And I'm convinced the stress and fear (and the visual in my head that's stuck on "replay") have shaved a number of years off my life expectancy!!!!