'Funny' accidents in our homes

Accidents happen in our homes every day and some of them can make you laughing. I hate to talk about a topic as scary and depressing as accidents, but some bizarre events have been witnessed in my household recently.

Sometime last month, Mama Jimmy was preparing dinner when curiosity got the better of her. She had put a pot of rice and potatoes on the stove to boil, and once she was sure that the mixture had heated to the desired softness, the temptation to smell the dish suddenly crossed her mind.

And so she opened the lid, releasing a gush of steam that hit her face with so much force that it seared through her nostrils and almost deleted the entire contents of her brain. Her face had never felt that hot.

Other accidents may not exactly elicit mirth, but they could be easily avoided if people paid greater attention to what they did and applied a little common sense to their activities.

Of course, some accidents are really beyond our control and there is nothing we can do about them, such as the recent incident when my son Russell fell off his bed at night while dreaming that a horrible monster was chasing him.

This happened in the dead of night on Tuesday. Mama Jimmy and I were sleeping soundly when, just after midnight, we were woken by a sound coming from the boy’s bedroom.

We rushed to the room and found the boy seated on the floor next to his bed. He was sweating and panting, with embarrassment written all over his face.

“I dreamed that a big monster was running after me,” he explained. “I was coming home from school with my friends when the strange beast emerged from a bush and started running after us. All my friends ran away faster than I did, so the monster focused on me.

“It was breathing fire and roaring, and at one point, it even threw a tear gas canister at me, so I ran even faster until I reached Uganda! Then I came across a cliff and decided to jump off it, but it turns out that the cliff was in fact my bed.”

The boy was lucky to escape unhurt, and save for his badly bruised ego, he was alright. After careful analysis of the accident, Mama Jimmy and I brainstormed on ways to ensure that the boy would sleep safely for the rest of the night.

No parent wants to see his or her child sustaining injuries from such a fall. Even tually, we agreed that for him to enjoy maximum safety in his sleep and stop falling off the bed, he would have to sleep on the floor.

We would also limit the time he spent watching cartoons and action movies, as this had probably contributed to this accident.

“Russell has been watching too many movies and riots on TV lately,” I observed after Mama Jimmy and I ensured he was safely asleep on the mattress on the floor.

“Some of those shows lead to delusional thoughts and catastrophic attempts at super-heroism.”

Another bizarre household accident happened two days later, this time involving our house help Maggy. A month ago, Mama Jimmy switched the containers that we use for storing sugar and salt, but for some reason she did not share this information with Miss Mboch.

We would get a taste of this mix up later that day when we hosted guests from Mama Jimmy’s former workplace and instructed Maggy to prepare a special meal.

On her part, Maggy did not pay much attention to the “salt” as she put it in the meal, and it was only after the guests had tasted the “sweetened” dish that the truth of the mix-up come out. Fellow citizens, let us endeavour to make our homes as safe as they can possibly be.