Fatherly love
My Dad is a great man. He shared his interests with me when I was little, he guided me through adolescence with warm love and firm boundaries, and now I'm all growed up myself he's a lively pub companion and a trusted confidante.

However, he is not a particularly careful man and I do share half his DNA. Sometimes the combination works out badly for one of us. Here is a partial list of things he's done to me as a child using a devil's recipe of general inattention, sitcom-grade clumsiness and a variety of company cars:

1986 - Before I was fully in the car, swung shut the front door of a Vauxhall Cavalier, crushing my ankle between the door and the cill. Pain: 7/10. Injuries: bleeding, swelling, difficulty walking for a couple of days. Off games: 2 days. No permanent damage.

1990 - ran over my foot with the rear wheel of a Saab 900 in a pub carpark, stopped when he heard a scream, then reversed back over it again in an attempt to put it right. Pain: 8/10. Injuries: three broken toes. Off games: 2 weeks.

1991 - on unloading the same Saab's boot at a beach one holiday, failed to notice that I hadn't stepped away and slammed the boot down on the crown of my head. Pain: 0/10 (unconscious). Injuries: some bleeding, short blackout, damaged hearing (mum's angry yelling). Off games: none. Forgiven: immediately. Beach time!

1992 - crushed me between the rear bumper of a Citroen BX and a garage door during an insufficiently well-observed reversing manoeuvre. Pain: 3/10. Injuries: bruised thighs. The cheap, rusty French car required a new bumper though.

I got my revenge in the end. I electrocuted him by turning on the lightswitch when he was re-wiring my bedroom.
( Scrumper, Mon 2 Aug 2010, 16:09, Reply)