Bob CollinsI’ve pretty much given up trying to get the little kids in my neighborhood wear bike helmets while riding on the street out front. Why parents aren’t the ones insisting remains beyond the human capacity to understand the world’s mysteries.
But a dad in Baxter, Minn., still has his kid around because, unlike the parents in my neighborhood, he gets it.
Christopher Groenwold walked to his mailbox on Saturday to pick up the mail, with his son, Cohen, 4 in trail on his bike.
When he turned around, he saw the mail truck jump up a bit. It was rolling over Cohen, the Brainerd Dispatch says.
“I heard kind of a pop. … He was crying and I grabbed him and put him in my lap. He had a little piece of helmet still left on him. The helmet saved his life. When the vehicle rolled over his head, if he didn’t have his helmet on he wouldn’t be playing here today,” Groenwold said.
Cohen got some road rash and scratches — and a piece of a helmet with a tire imprint as a souvenir — but was otherwise unhurt.
“I never thought this would happen to us, but it did,” Groenwold said. He’s a firefighter and an EMT.
But he did, actually, because that’s why smart parents make their kids wear bike helmets.
It’s the parents who don’t bother who won’t think their kid could be taken from them in an instant.
