One day, my children were playing outside, and for reasons I’m still not aware of, they were screaming. I walked outside.

Me: “Is someone dying?”

Children: “No.”

Me: “Is someone bleeding?”

Children: “No.”

Me: “Is a limb at a strange angle that it doesn’t normally go?”

Children: “No.”

Me: “Is someone attempting to kidnap you?”

Children: “No.”

Me: “Then why are you screaming?”

Then, I heard my poor suffering neighbor next door burst out laughing. I went back inside to keep cleaning without screaming children.

I live in a fairly small coastal town where not much usually happens, but this week, we made county-wide news with a case of attempted grand theft. The story has to be one of the best examples of “the more you read, the worse it gets” that I have ever heard.

Our most posh neighborhood consists of a lot of mansions on the water. Apparently, the suspect tried to steal an extremely expensive kayak from the dock in the backyard of one of these mansions… in broad daylight… by paddling away in the kayak!

But it gets better. What makes this neighborhood so expensive is not just that it’s on the water, but also that through some clever engineering, the waterways there are not subject to the coastal tides, so the rich people can enjoy their boats and docks twenty-four-seven. 

How did they achieve this? By closing off the waterways with locks! So, all the police had to do was to wait for the thief, furiously paddling in his getaway kayak, to get to the lock and then sit there — for five full minutes — waiting for the gates to open. 

Needless to say, the suspect was arrested, and the posh kayaks are safe in their docks once again.

Many years ago, I used to own half a horse — the left side, if you’re curious. A friend who lived in the country owned the other half, as well as several other horses. The area around her place was wonderful for riding, particularly one old farm road with no vehicular traffic.

There was a problem, however, with a pack of six little yappy dogs. I’m not sure what breed they were; they were different color variants on the same style of dog, so probably pedigreed yappy-thing. They were owned by someone with more money than sense who had bought a place in the country. Yeah, that kind of person, and that kind of dog.

When we rode down the dirt lane past the house where the dogs lived, they’d come pouring off the porch, through the hedge around the property (about twenty yards from the house) and into the dirt road, where they’d harass our horses. My horse never threw me, but it was a close thing a few times because he was incredibly nervous about his feet, much more so than a typical horse. The dogs’ owner was never in evidence; they just threw their little house dogs out in the yard and ignored them.

One day, I wasn’t riding my horse; I was riding one of the other horses my friend owned. And this horse was a bit weird. I could tell you horse stories all day, like the fact that we saw him trying to imitate a Tennessee Walker’s running walk gait — and actually doing it for a couple of paces. (My horse was a Walker and was kept in the field next to him.) He’d take down fences and graze right outside, just to prove he could.

Well, the little dogs poured out through the hedge and started doing their thing. At that point, I’d had enough. I yelled, “Let’s get ’em!” and turned him toward the dogs. He put his head down and went for them. It was maybe twenty feet from the center of the dirt road where I was riding to the hedge. And those little yappy dogs put their little yappy tails between their legs and covered that distance at a speed I wouldn’t have expected, with me yelling, “Git on home!” the whole time, and my horse trying to grab one. The dogs ran back to their yard and hid under the porch.

After that, when the dogs came pouring out, I just had to yell, “Git on home!” and they’d flee, no matter what horse I was riding. I have no doubt that they continued to harass anyone else riding or walking down that road, though.

Growing up, I lived very close to my elementary school, about five blocks away. Like any child, I was very eager for days off of school due to weather, but we hardly ever got snow days; the local snow plows were too efficient.

One day, it was raining very hard. But this wasn’t normal rain. I can clearly see that this was freezing rain, turning to ice the second it touched the ground. Everything, especially the snow piled where grass once had been, was covered in a sheet of ice.

Excited and having never seen weather like this before, I checked the news and discovered that school was canceled. I told my dad.

He insisted that school wasn’t canceled; school wouldn’t be canceled for a little rain.

He demanded that I walk to school. Now, even though I lived only five blocks away, I lived at the top of a small hill, and school was at the top of a different small hill. There was a very significant valley in between. A person could only go around the valley by walking on a couple of streets that didn’t have sidewalks; I was forbidden to walk on those streets.

That day was supposed to be show-and-tell day, so I loaded up my backpack with my favorite rock: a random hunk of conglomerate about the size of a sack of flour I had found one day. I was a very strong — but very stupid — child. It took up most of the space in my backpack, but I also added my three favorite books, my lunch (a thermos of soup, a sandwich, and an apple), a stuffed animal, a calculator which I was forbidden to use by the teachers, a notepad/diary, several pens, pencils, markers, and erasers, and a thermos of hot cocoa I’d made for myself because this was looking like it would be a hot cocoa sort of day.

Leaving the house, I immediately started to slip and slide on the sidewalk, so I switched to all fours. I told Dad it was very slippery, but he didn’t care; he wanted me to go to school myself and report back to him if it was closed.

So, I started to the sidewalk. I slid down the driveway and managed only barely not to slide into the street. Then, I stood back up and attempted to walk down the hill into the valley.

I slipped, fell on my butt, and slid the entire way down into the valley. Then, I was trapped.

I tried to crawl up the other side. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried to crawl up in the direction of home. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried this repeatedly and started feeling sick and cold and wet, so I opened up my backpack to get my thermos of hot cocoa out. From how many times I had fallen down, my sandwich was smashed, my apple was sauce, my thermos was dented, my pens were all broken, and my favorite rock was shattered. This last thing was the most upsetting to me.

I chugged the hot cocoa angrily and got off the sidewalk into the snow. (I was a stupid kid and couldn’t imagine walking anywhere but the sidewalk prior to that.) This worked, and I made it to the top of the hill. After that, it was a short walk to the school.

One of my teachers was standing in the driveway waving cars away from the school. School was canceled. I made her write it in my notebook for me with one of the pens that had survived, and I started the trek back home.

I ate my soup at the bottom of the valley on my way back home.

Finally, I got home. Dad was still there, and I was covered in ice. Angrily, crying, I told him school had been canceled, he was an idiot for not listening to me in the first place, and my favorite rock was broken. It turned out work had been canceled for him, too. I was in first grade, and I understood that the weather was unsafe better than my dad did.

Five years later, still in elementary school, we had another bout of freezing rain. And once more, Dad forced me to walk all the way to school. This time, the doors were just locked, and there were no teachers handing out pamphlets. Once more, I returned home to yell at him for not trusting my instincts. I had never once said that school was canceled when it hadn’t been.

A few years after that, still in elementary school but nearing the end of my elementary career, it was freezing rain again. Dad still didn’t believe me, but this time my school had a website. So, I pulled up the website and triumphantly showed him that school was canceled due to freezing rain.

This happened one final time, in high school. I had to pull up the website to show him once more that freezing rain was considered enough of a threat to human life to cancel school.

After that, I left home, left the state, and went to college and later to work. I… don’t talk to my Dad as much as he maybe wants, but he never really respected my opinions growing up, so I’m reluctant to share much with him.

I am now free to refuse to go anywhere during freezing rain, and I do so openly. Everyone at work knows that if I’m not coming in, it’s because of unsafe conditions. It’s at the point that people will call me to see if I’m coming in, and if I say I’m not, they say they won’t, either!

CONTENT WARNING: Paramedic work, including multiple deaths (mentioned). Main story: Serious car accident. (Positive outcome!)

I’ve been a paramedic for almost two decades. As much as it makes me sound jaded, I have seen a lot, and it’s hard to make me break down these days. Oddly enough, the one that makes me break down the most is one where everyone turned out completely fine.

During my first few years as a paramedic, I worked in the big capital city in my state. I have seen my fair share of overdoses, a fair few king-hits where the victim didn’t make it, countless assaults, and more than a few muggings gone wrong. I was burned out after eight years in the area. I was the longest-standing paramedic there; all my partners over the years lasted less than two years before moving on to something else. It was just really hard.

I fell in love with a beautiful woman, and by some cosmic joke on her part, she loved me, too. I popped the question, and we were wildly happy. Her dad started getting on in years and needed some help around his huge house so he wouldn’t have to go into a care facility. It was the perfect time to move the nine hours back to her sleepy little rural hometown. My beautiful wife was going to take her genius doctor skills to the local hospital, and I was going to run around in an ambulance. My greatest hope was that instead of scraping overdose victims off of bathroom floors, I’d at least be cleaning up after injuries and the odd heart attack. I was ready for a change.

My first shift was horrific, and I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. We rolled on a double-car accident scene and it was horrendous. No one made it out alive except for the teenage driver of one of the cars, who never walked again. They were typical bored teens being silly on an open road, and something went horribly wrong. I was at the hospital filling out paperwork and had to hear the doctors telling the other four kids’ parents that their children were never coming home. I went home and cried in my wife’s lap. 

Granted, after that, it was a lot of smooth sailing. I had the odd farm accident with some missing fingers, older patients with chest pain, and a few kids falling off trampolines. I was finding the joy again.

One night, in the middle of a h*** of a storm, we get the call to a rolled SUV just outside of town. Dispatch had a h*** of a time figuring out where they were; they were tourists passing through and the lady on the phone was hysterical. I was shaking getting out of the rig. When I saw the state of the car, my stomach dropped, and when I saw the “Baby On Board” sticker on the shattered back windshield, I almost turned around and got right back in. Nevertheless, I steeled myself, and my partner and I scrambled down the ditch in the pouring rain.

The lady who called us is the passenger. She’s hysterical, moving and screaming because her legs are trapped by the crumpled dashboard. She’s got glass cuts all over her hands, face, and chest, but nothing is bleeding profusely. I breathe a sigh of relief; it’s not always a sure thing, and she could definitely have internal injuries, but we love to find a patient awake and alert. We prod at her legs, and she can feel everything; she’s just really stuck. She is crying that she can’t wake up her husband and she can’t turn in her seat to see her kids or dog. She says her baby was crying before and isn’t anymore, and she can’t hear her four-year-old at all. I leave her with my partner and the firefighters who are trying to pry her out of there and move around the car.

The husband is totally unconscious, but he has strong vitals. I can see a broken arm and a huge egg on his head where the airbag slammed him back into his seat, but he’s out cold. I slap some monitoring on him and strap him to a headboard, and everything looks good until we can cut through his door and get him out. From my experience, he really is just knocked out, and we won’t know anything else until he wakes up or we can get him to the hospital. He does groan when I touch his arm to make sure the bone didn’t come through, which is an excellent sign. His pupils are reactive and his reflexes are intact. Gold star for the driver.

I’m terrified to look in the backseat. When I manage to get the door open, I see the baby’s car seat, and inside I find… a sleeping baby. The car seat did exactly what it was meant to; it is still strapped securely to the car, and the baby inside is INCENSED that I am waving a flashlight in her little face. She immediately voices her displeasure, which makes her poor mother burst into tears again. I cannot find a scratch on this baby. I have the whole seat off to one of the medics who has arrived to help, and they go about calming the little tike down without removing her from the seat.

I can hear barking from the cargo area. I look back there and see one of those fancy travel cages made out of the thick steel you have to have custom-fitted to your car. Inside is an upset Labrador, wagging its tail and whining because there’s shattered glass in her cage for some reason. I stick my hands through the bar, and she excitedly licks my hand. One of the firefighters manages to unlock the cage and slip a lead on the dog. She jumps straight out of the car like nothing happened and immediately tries to climb inside the car to get to her owners. Doggo secured.

I have to deal with the elephant in the room. I can’t see the other child. There’s a rear-facing car seat on the passenger side, but it is entirely empty. My stomach twists again. Could the kid have been ejected? One of the firefighters makes the mistake of saying, “Hey, where’s the other kid?” loudly enough for their mum to hear, so she starts freaking out while they’re trying to cut her out.

Me: *Loudly* “The straps aren’t broken. Ma’am, can your kid let themself out of their car seat?”

Woman: “Yes! We used to have trouble with him unbuckling himself, but he stopped doing it!”

My stomach was still in knots. If he’d been unbuckled back there when the car flipped, he could be anywhere. We scrambled out and started calling for him, shining flashlights into the bushes. About ten minutes passed, and I heard my partner telling the mum that if she couldn’t stay still, we’d have to sedate her. Then, I heard yelling from the road. Back up the wet embankment, I went.

Standing next to the firetruck was the kid! He had his blanket and no shoes on, and he was standing with a man I recognized as living on the outskirts of town. I ran over to him with my bag, and a story unfolded.

He’d been totally fine after the crash, safe in his seat. He let himself out, saw that his mummy and daddy were hurt, and went to “get help”. He walked almost a full kilometre, in the pouring rain, in the dark, with no shoes on. We all thank our lucky stars that he turned left when he got back to the road; because if he’d turned right, it led straight out into nothing for about 60 kilometres. This little guy walked until he found a house and knocked to ask for help. The local guy who answered the door had called the police, who’d informed him of the crash, so he’d bundled up the little guy into his car and driven him back to his parents.

The kid’s feet were cut to shreds and full of dirt. I bandaged him as best I could and carried him down to show him to his mum, who was once again hysterical but no longer fighting us trying to get out. 

It took two hours to get the parents out of the car. Dad did regain consciousness on his own; it was much easier getting him to comply with staying calm and still when we could tell him his whole family was safe and alive. 

All told, Dad had a broken arm, some scrapes and bruises, and a mild concussion. Mum had superficial cuts and scrapes, some internal bruising, and some whiplash. The baby was unbothered in general. The young lad had some cuts from climbing out of the window and hurt feet from his big walk, and he was dehydrated and hungry, which was fixed with some water and a bunch of ice cream the nurses kept buying him. The dog had glass in her foot, which the local vet saw to after checking her over, her only other injury being a seemingly hurt leg — though the vet did confide in me that he wasn’t sure whether she was faking the limp for extra treats.

When I think about how wrong that night could have gone, I get tears in my eyes every time. Every safety feature in that car worked perfectly. Every kid was strapped in properly, the dog was secured correctly, and as a result, that whole family only has a ruined car and a pin in dad’s arm to prove it ever even happened. That was one of my best nights on the job.

This story is part of the Best-Feel-Good-Stories Of-2023 roundup!

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