photo credit: Courtesy Wikimedia Common

Car safety had not reached the point of kid safety when I raised my kids. To enter the back seat of our two-door sedan, you pulled the passenger seat forward,  then shoved it back yourself once you’d squeezed in.

Child safety seats were flimsy little things that hooked over the top of the front passenger seat. you’d set the child  through from the top, placing his fat little legs through the openings on either sides of the bottom, like the openings in toddler playground swings. Then you pulled the bar down over his head until it reached his waist and supposedly protected him.

I stayed alert for red lights or sudden stops, because as soon as I hit the brake, the passenger seat flopped forward, and the child’s head aimed straight at the dashboard. If I didn’t throw my right arm across his car seat as my left hand guided the steering wheel, he might have catapulted out of the car seat right into the windshield.

I often marvel that my children survived to adulthood.