Getting Run Over By The Milk Truck

A girl we knew in the neighborhood had been accidentally hit by a milk truck while bicycling. Fortunately, her injuries were not critical, since the truck was going quite slowly. She was in Sunday School the next Sunday, with a couple of bandages covering scrapemarks, her appearence only adding to the drama that we imagined had occured. The episode was big news in our childhood circle of friends.

The driver of the Tro-Fe Dairy truck was a pleasant fellow, and he was the milkman on our street as well as on the street where the incident occured. Only days after the accident, with talk of it still fresh on my mind, I had a brilliant idea for fun. My two friends and I would pretend that we had been run over by the milk truck, too! That morning, we patiently stood waiting in the grass at the edge of the road. The milk truck driver always drove near to the curb in order to keep from darting in and out of the street traffic. We stood close together near the street, laughing and sticking up our thumbs as we had seen the hitch hikers do. As the truck neared us, I gave the order to fall and all of us fell to the grass as if we had been ran over, and lay there as if we were dead.

Needless to say, our play was not nearly as funny to the milkman as it was to us. Having just went through the stress that came with the real accident, the poor man's nerves were probably still frayed. As we fell, he slammed on the brakes and brought the truck to a sharp stop, even though it was never closer than several feet from us. We were lucky that he was such a nice man. I don't remember everything he said, but I do recall him opening the back of the truck and starting to rearrange the jumble of milk bottles and crates that had been slung to the front as he skidded to a stop.

Do yall see what yall made me do? I ought to tell yall's Mamas about this, but I won't this time. Just remember and don't ever pull a stunt like this again!

We all felt fortunate to get off so lightly. The milkman probably sensed that the joke was not intentionally on him, which was true. We saw the milk truck merely as a prop for some fantasy time, never even considering the impact our skit may have had on the driver.

Even though it was great pretend fun, we learned our lesson that day.