The other day I nearly met my maker in the most embarassing of ways.

Picture this:

I am driving to work at 10:30 at night. I’ve just passed the Rex Lookout halfway between Cairns and Port Douglas and I have about 30km to go at this point. It’s a dark night, relatively cloudy but not a hint of rain, and the road snakes between the mountains and the coastline in a multitude of hairpin turns.

There’s barely any traffic. It’s a Saturday night and the tourists are all holed up in the flamboyant boozy mecca that is Port Douglas and anyone wanting to party in Cairns has long made the trip. Nobody is stupid enough to travel in the opposite direction except me. Phone reception is scarily patchy. There are large stretches of blackout zones throughout the trip. If I were to get a flat tyre or have an accident it’s exceedingly likely I’d have to go for a walk to find enough reception to call for help.

The music fades. There is a long pause as the CD player changes discs (no I don’t have Bluetooth). There is silence.

Then…

I hear snoring in the back seat.

What. The. Fuck!?!?!

Naturally, I nearly have a heart attack and drive off the nearest cliff because I was so terrified and I immediately thought of every single urban legend where the serial killer jumps into the car while the clueless bimbo stops at the petrol station (and I always do this to have my pre-work Coke since I don’t drink coffee and I need the caffeine) and waits until she’s alone before slitting her throat. I am now experiencing pants wetting terror. Then the snorer begins to speak and I calm down.

My daughter, who refuses to get into a car without an armful of toys, had balanced her Cretoxyrhina precariously in her toybox in the back seat and when I’d turned an exceptionally tight corner, his talking button had activated.

This jerk…

The worst part is, this isn’t even the first time she’s done something like this to me. She left a lion rattle in there once and I thought my car was falling apart. Every time I turned a corner I could hear what sounded like croaking or a death rattle. I tore the car apart and couldn’t find anything. Turns out it was wedged right up underneath the passenger seat behind a pair of her shoes. Then there was the singing bear. And the music box. And the rest of the talking dinosaurs.

What a way to go. Death by Cretoxyrhina. Bet that’s a sentence that doesn’t come up in conversation often.