It was decades ago, during my first marriage.
We were relaxing on our screened back porch in Hollywood, Fl, with two other couples when my then 12-year-old daughter Karen thudded around the corner screaming, "Mommy, Mommy."
She was cradling the limp body of her two-year-old brother, David, in her arms. There was a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.
"What happened?" my then wife, Z, asked as we both scrambled to our feet and rushed toward the door.
The answer was one to freeze the heart of any parent.
"He got hit by a car!"
`I never heard any brakes,' I thought inanely. Then, more chillingly, and that meant the car hadn't even slowed down.
My wife's thoughts were equally ominous: `Oh, my God. She should never have moved him!'
My heart was pounding painfully in my ears as I strained to see just how badly hurt he was.
All three of us reached the door simultaneously as our guests sat stunned and silent. As my wife reached for David, she asked "How? What car?"
"Stevie threw one of his Matchbox cars and it bounced off the wall and hit David in the mouth," Karen said breathlessly.
We looked down at our toddler who, we now realized, had been limp with bewilderment rather than shock or injury. He tried a tentative sniffle and then began struggling to get down as his 11-year-old brother Steve trudged sheepishly around the corner.
"I didn't mean to hit him," Steve said defensively, holding up the toy car, all two inches of it. "It slipped."
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