Dad's World with Jonathan deBurca Butler

My boys, or should I say, my men, were showing their bravery and realising perhaps that Daddy was in a bit of a pickle.

IT HAD been one those days. It was hot, there was no wind and everything was surprisingly calm.

One of those days that made you think of Wexford strawberries, Kilkenny hurling or really bad sunburn.

We were on our way back from my parents’ house. The boys were in the back of the car and there hadn’t been a peep out of them for quite some time. They had done quite a bit of running around in my folk’s garden and they must have been tired.

I was listening to the radio and was coming up to take a left turn at a set of traffic lights.

Suddenly, out pops a wine-coloured Volkswagen. I saw the driver looking at me. We shared a look which said “this is about to happen. I hope it’s not bad”.

I slammed on the brakes and braced myself for the impact, but more than anything, for what I thought would be that awful silence before the boys’ frightened tears.

Everyone winced as our respective bonnets took that momentary half-hopeful, slow-motion pause before the inevitable impact.

I had never been in a crash before and I don’t want to be in one again but as crashes go, this one wasn’t that bad. I sat in the driver seat and looked through my windscreen at this stranger who had landed out of nowhere and into my day.

I then looked in the mirror. So far I had heard nothing from the chairs behind me but I was fully expecting to see Fionn and Luke’s bottom lips beginning to wobble. As always, the two of them did exactly the opposite of what I expected them to do.

“Is our tyre burst again?” asked Fionn, referring to the two burst tyres we have had in the last three months, with the nonchalance of an experienced mechanic.

“No,” I said, amazed by his apparent composure. “But it might be a little worse than that.”

I looked at Luke to find him sitting up with that beautiful curious little face and the dodi, that we should have gotten rid of a long time ago, sucking back and forth rhythmically.

Neither of them was crying. My boys, or should I say, my men, were doing me proud; showing their bravery and realising perhaps that Daddy was in a bit of a pickle, a very adult pickle that they were probably better off not getting involved in.

“I have to go and talk to this man,” I told them. “Back in a minute.”

As it turned out, I couldn’t have picked a nicer chap to crash into and he did quite well himself. After an initial, but very cordial bout of you did X and you did Y, we decided to get the cars off the road and assess the damage.

My car had taken the brunt of the hit and parts of it will need to be tapped out but at the end of it all, we took each other’s numbers and shook hands.

I stepped back into the car.

“That man’s a meany,” said Luke, lisping through his spit covered dodi.

“Now, now,” I said. “There were two of us in it. It was an accident.”

Luke sat back in his chair, probably a little dejected that I had rejected his advocating on my part.

Fionn turned to look at him.

“Well,” he said, raising his hands and shoulders like a Sicilian.

“Accidents happen Luke. We’re just going to have to get another tyre now.”

“The tyre’s fine Fionn,” I said. “The bonnets a little banjaxed though.”

He didn’t seem convinced, and as we drove home in silence, I could see him mulling it over in his active little mind.

When I parked in front of the house, Fionn jumped out of the car and walked around to the front wheel. He stood there, hands on hips looking at it as if it was a goat at a country fair. He gave his head one shake to the side, walked forward two paces and gave the tyre a good kick.

“Dad,” he shouted at me as I walked into our garden.

“Yeah?” I hollered back.

He walked towards me and slung his left thumb back towards the car.

“Tyre’s fine.” he said.