Who saved my life?

My dad
puts the record on.
The Greatest Hits.

Stories gathered, lived, told
and retold.
The stories of a family are repeated again and again, with the slightest nudging of an excuse. No matter how many times a story gets told, it can always be told just one more time.
Until it isn't.

The stories of my life being saved come in a set of three. Two, I vaguely remember. Or maybe I just remember the retellings coupled with the intense emotions that occurred - the grooves in my own personal record. The third is only available via the memories of others, so I'll start with the other two.

First, comes the "truck driving" story.

"Do you remember doing that?"
"No, but you're going to tell it anyway".

My dad let me play with his keychain. It was filled with keys.
They were mostly normal, like a janitor's set, but it also had a unique skeleton key to our house, and one of those plastic clips used to fix them to a belt loop. Together, they all worked to fascinate a four or five year old who had a tactile fixation. (This was about two decades before fidget spinners... late 1900's).
Details of my dad mowing the lawn and my mom in the kitchen with a suspicion/intuition something was about to happen, have all been provided to me in the retellings.
New grooves in the record.
But I doubt they expected the stunt I was about to pull.

What I remember is being in my dad's truck, with the keys, and then suddenly being across the street. Somehow I was able to recreate what I had seen my dad do countless times, and got the truck to move. I sort of remember being greeted by some terrified ladies, who could have had their stroll flattened by a toddler. I don't even remember being punished. Thankfully, everything turned out fine except for the short brick wall that mercifully kept the truck out of our neighbor's yard (and probably their front porch, too).

The second story involves the same truck.
One second -
I forgot to mention this truck, a beige Toyota pickup, had a manual transmission (which my dad would leave in gear when it was parked, explaining how I could "drive" it across a street without touching the pedals). I don't remember if this was before or after my self-guided driving lesson. I guess we'll have to listen to side 2 of the record. But, full honesty, I do remember my dad telling us, on more than one occasion, to not touch anything in the truck.

Oh well.

My two older brothers and I were left alone in said truck, and again we were told not to touch anything. Well, this time I didn't have keys, so I had to find another way to keep my hands occupied.
Like most kids I would watch my dad work the various instruments of the truck. I wasn't in the car seat anymore so I was right in the cockpit of the most incredible machine I had seen so far in my life (The SNES wasn't out yet) and I couldn't see much else anyway. One neat little instrument in particular was the parking brake. It was one of those long rods that protruded horizontally from under the dash. I would watch him pull it with all those satisfying clicks, and then, to disengage, squeeze the handle, twist, and push it back into the dash. He would have complete control of the vehicle and its devices - using it as a tool to accomplish what he wished and go wherever he pleased.

To master the tool was to experience freedom, and I wanted to be free.

This is all with the benefit of hindsight, of course. I imagine my still-forming brain just wanted to be like dad. So... I manipulated the parking brake.

My brothers tried to stop me but it was right in front of me, filled with potential energy just waiting to be released. The little beige Toyota, filled with three boys and their screams, went rolling backwards and hit the corner of a house.
No brick wall to save me this time.
I'm sure it cracked or dented the plaster, many California homes have plaster or stucco, but nothing serious.

I'll admit, considering the previous two stories as "life-saving" moments might seem a bit of a stretch. But they always accompany the third story, and I guess I view them as connected in that, by the time I was five years old, there were already (at least) three moments that could have changed my life completely (or ended it).

Do I consider that my life was saved? Or spared in some way?
I actually do.
I really believe something allowed me to avoid a really catastrophic outcome in both situations. To me, that sounds a lot like saving, even though it's abstract.
Maybe another way of viewing it would be:

I'm alive, after being put in (or choosing to be in) situations where others weren't so lucky. This fact has nothing to do with anything I did to avoid the more tragic outcomes - Being T-boned by another vehicle, striking a pedestrian, crashing into the house, one of my brothers falling out of the car or trying to escape - I know I didn't keep those things from happening... but something did.

What, exactly? I don't know, but it's a question I'd like to explore further.

The third story.

Now, this one I don't remember at all because I was too young to form any explicit memories - which is to say I do believe other things were imprinted on my newly formed ridges. But I have heard this record played so many times, I think I can wing it.

It's quite boring as far as stories go, but as an experience, I can tell it left an impression on my parents' memories for the decades since. All I know is, around two years old, on one of the many camping trips my family would take outside the Bay Area, I decided to wander away from the safety of our site and toddled towards a cliff.

I so wish I could know what it was that drew me. I'm reminded of legends I heard about Crater Lake that claimed people would be entranced or possessed to walk off the edge of the cliffs there. Maybe some ancient curse. But before I could reach the costliest freedom I would ever know - my dad saved me.

As he and my mom tell it, I was one or two steps from the edge. One stumble and my chapter in the Nielsen Family story would have been merely a footnote. A record they'd happily never listen to again. I do believe them and I do believe my dad really did throw himself to my rescue, calling on whatever deep instinct he had in himself to put his own body in jeopardy in exchange for my survival. It could have robbed a family of its father for the sake of its son. Though, I know my dad and the physical abilities of his youth, I suspect his unconscious mind knew he could pull it off.

I also believe their account because, like I said, these three stories are, 90% of the time, told as a saga. And, the saga is true. There's some sort of virtue, axiom, or lesson of each story and the broader message all the stories tell together. The thread that runs through them all is as true as ever:
I had to try things.
I had to experiment, fail, seek answers, seek adventure. These three stories tell me that I never stood a chance to be anything different. Frustrating as it has been, for myself and others, it's been a consistent part of my identity, even when I've tried to remove, starve, or overthink it away.

So, yeah, my dad saved me from probable death, while the spirit of adventure saved me from a certain one. The death of "quiet desperation".

I wonder, if that boy saw me today, would he recognize himself?