When I was nearly 10 years old, my family and I went to Europe for a 2-3 week trip.
We were all super-excited, and as was typical of your standard Indian dad, Daddy had his camcorder ready to record a bunch of those memories (Mummy was going to try to get these transferred from video to DVD, and if I can, I'll try to post some particularly good clips in the future!). *We were not able to, unfortunately 😔.*
We flew into London first, and we needed to find a cab to our hotel. We found a cabby, and initially, I didn't think much of it. Daddy was in the front seat, and the rest of us were in the back. But then we started noticing the driver seemed a bit off.
He was talking strangely (no, it wasn't his accent), and he said he needed to make a stop first. Daddy obviously questioned this, but the driver made a stop anyway and left the car. We were all super sketched-out by this turn of events, and we thought maybe the driver would do something to us.
All of a sudden, Daddy handed me a camcorder battery. Now, this was an old-school camcorder, the one with the huge and heavy rectangular battery. Daddy had taken the extra and given it to me. He had the one from the camcorder in his hand. I must've been behind the driver's seat because Daddy told me (to the best of my recollection):
"Manoj, if the driver doesn't take us straight to our hotel when he gets back, I want you to hit him in the head as hard as you can with the battery."
Honestly, hearing that from Daddy didn't scare me. I thought it was kinda awesome, and I started laughing. But Daddy was very serious, and fortunately, the driver came back and we got to our hotel without incident.
Daddy apologized to me, but he wanted to make sure we were protected. But there was no need for him to apologize: I was the Robin to his Batman. Or maybe he just recognized that I was the craziest one in our family. Either way, it was just one thing:
Pure. Awesome.