Road Grader
When I was four years old, my greatest fear was heavy machinery. In particular, I feared road graders. These noisy, smelly machines would occasionally pass back and forth on the dirt road just outside the property, as if stalking the house.



My mother was in the habit of taking a half-hour noontime nap. Not wanting to be disturbed, she would routinely lock me out of the house for that half hour. These days, that sounds terribly negligent, but we lived in a semi-rural area, and what kind of mischief could result?

One noontime, as my mother slept, a road grader passed by. I cowered by the back door (a French door containing twelve panes of glass) and cried in fear.

All of a sudden, the road grader turned into the driveway and approached the house. I panicked. I picked up a brick and busted out one of the panes of glass and crawled through the treacherous shards, to safety.

That was the last time I was locked out of the house. The road grader was apparently just turning around, but I had my doubts, having observed their predatory ways.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Wed 11 Apr 2012, 1:57, 1 reply)

My mum panicked when a D-8 reversed towards her
For good reason, too. It was reversing right to where she was, at the wheel of a company truck on a jobsite. She panicked and threw it into "Park" instead of "Reverse, and the D8 drove right over the hood of the truck. The driver barely noticed the crunch or the screaming, but he did notice the job foreman wildly waving at him to stop. Which he did, on the hood of the truck. Her boss never asked her to drive onto the jobsite again.
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Wed 11 Apr 2012, 7:49, closed)