Toddlers, buses and ice creams
A couple of months back, I was riding the bus with a couple of friends, part way through a stag weekend incidentally, and a young family hop on. They were very much like Modern Parents from Viz - all tie-dye and upturned noses at some (only slightly) intoxicated chaps, who are by-and-large behaving themselves. So we moderate our language, start talking more quietly and try to look slightly less unsettling. The youngest, a toddler, is completely oblivious to his parents' distain of us and is kneeling on the seat in front and waving to us, so we wave back, and the parents seem to thaw towards us a little. The cheeky little chap then turns round and promplty drops his ice cream in the footwell. Unperturbed, he leans forward to retreive it, but rather unfortunately the driver chooses that moment to stamp on the break, sending the little chap headlong after his lost ice cream. I turned back to see his chubby little legs windmilling wildly in the air with his top half wedged under the seat in front, from which rather a lot of muffled wailing was coming from. It was great - it looked like something from a cartoon, and this was reinforced when his Dad pulling on both of his legs to free him.

When he was finally extricated, covered in snot and ice cream, I gave up frantically biting my knuckle and finally cracked into something that sounded Sid James if he'd swallowed a hyena. I was still crying a little when we had to get off at the same stop as the family (the little fella was fine by this point, and back to his chirpy little self).
(luckybluecoat, Fri 23 Jul 2010, 16:39, Reply)