Car seats, concussions, and religious clarity

I see they are having child car-seat inspection and instruction events at the local malls. Along the same vein, in my new vehicle's owner’s manual (which I've read three times and still don't understand it all), there are 18 pages devoted to child-seat installation and use. Clearly child car seats are a big deal.

This is not at all how it was when I was a kid. We didn't even have car seats back then.

I can remember sitting in the back seat of our tan Ford Fairlane, constantly adjusting my position — keeping my territory separate from my brother’s while watching out for any whacks from the front seat when we started acting up.

I even remember my mother carrying my new baby brother, wrapped in a blanket, on her lap in the passenger seat. They'd call Child Protective Services if you did that today.

You have to remember it was a different time back then. Cars didn't even have seat belts, to say nothing of airbags or anti-lock brakes. Yet somehow we made it to Grandma's, the beach, Great Adventure, etc. How so many baby boomers like me survived to adulthood is surely a miracle.

By the time my kids came, it was a different story. If you've had kids you know what I mean. Trying to deal with installing and removing car seats can be a back-breaking experience where you really need to be a contortionist or a gymnast or something.

Wrangling those thick webbed belts in and out of the many tight-fitting slots in the seat and all that, at such a low angle, is just really, really hard on your back. Truly, there is a need for a "next generation" car seat that simply snaps in and out. When the crowd-funding request comes in for that be sure to jump on it, because it will sell like hot cakes no doubt.

My all-time most amazing car-seat experience happened as I was bringing my kid to church. We had a mini-van at the time. I was attempting to remove said kid, still in her car seat, from the middle seat of the van in the parking lot of the church.

When I bent down to start the process my head hit the edge of the roof of the mini-van square on, hard. It was like someone hit me with a baseball bat. I was momentarily stunned; many would say I'm always in somewhat of a daze, but this was a daze on steroids.

Somehow I got my act together and got the kid and car seat out of the vehicle. I then dropped her off in the child-care room (church child-care attendants are saints and should each be given a free trip to Cancun once a year as far as I'm concerned). Then I headed back upstairs for the service. It was to be the most memorable church service I'd ever attended.

Sitting in the pew while gently massaging my crushed skull, I listened attentively to the pastor's sermon. Suddenly, in my coma-like fog, it all started to make sense: We should all just treat each other as we would like to be treated. Simple.Why hadn't this occurred to me before, I wondered, while slowly nodding in and out of consciousness.

I continued to listen attentively while feeling the slowly forming bump on my noggin getting larger and larger. If we really could just learn to treat each other as we would like to be treated, what a great world it would be.

It wouldn't matter what gender or color or sexuality or nationality we were, because we would all just automatically do the right thing. It wouldn't matter what agenda we had, because whatever agenda it was, we'd be treated exactly how the person or group considering our agenda would like to be treated.

What a miracle. Say goodbye to the United Nations because you would no longer need it. Turn that huge building into affordable housing in Manhattan, why don't you. Now that would really be a miracle.

What was most likely a small concussion had given me a clarity of religious thought I'd never experienced before. Just treat others as you would like to be treated. It's so simple and so powerful.

Somebody wants to make a left turn out of the drug store? Let them in because, if you were making the left turn, you'd want to be let it. Thinking about throwing a cigarette butt out of a car window? Don't do it, because the person living in the house by the street where the butt lands doesn't want their house to become your ashtray, same as you wouldn't want someone throwing garbage in front of your house. See how simple it is?

You can take all the great religions of the world, with all their associated dogma and theology, and, when you boil it all down, if we all just treated each other the way we'd like to be treated, pretty much you'd have the core message right there, wouldn't you? There shouldn't be much more to it than that. So simple yet so powerful.

You realize it took me a pretty awful head trauma to achieve this level of religious clarity; I'm not kidding, I was dizzy for three days after that church service.

Still, I know I shouldn't be the only one to finally get it when it comes to religion, so here's my proposal: The other day I bought a bunch of warped 2-by-4s cheap in the clearance aisle at the home center. So that you can achieve the same level of religious clarity I did — the realization that all we have to do is treat each other as we would like to be treated — I will gladly take one of the warped 2-by-4s and bash you in the head with it, just like when I bashed my head into the roof of the mini-van. That's what it took for me to see the light, so maybe it will work for you as well.

Treat others as you would like to be treated (and watch your head when removing a car seat). Easy-peasy. It really is that simple.

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