Digger, Disney World and the Florida traffic ban

Much has been said and will continue to be said about Digger’s outstanding professional qualities and wonderfully mischievous nature, but his off-the-beat activities are no less noteworthy. Many years ago when our children were still pre-teens, we took them on a fathers-only week-long trip to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. 

Let’s just say that National Lampoon’s Vacation film series are a paradigm of decorum by comparison. Beyond the par-for-the-course hospital emergency room visits and kid squabbling - Digger’s Joey trying to catch crabs and my Tally hurling stones to warn them away, Digger’s Lily trying to calm both of them down and my Danny covering himself from head to foot with well-chewed sticky chewing gum - there was the car journey down the Florida Keys.

Digger was doing the driving. For some reason, whose nefariousness I can only speculate on, he had no licence, so the car was rented on mine, on which he was now clocking in at a cool 90 or more mph. Sirens and horns pull us to a halt, an ample lady cop waddles up and demands his licence. 

Fortunately in those days licences did not have photos, and he hands her mine. So what’s your birth date, she asks. Urgently I whisper in his ear “February 13”. By now His Diggership is ever so slightly flustered and stutters “February thirt…" Right, says our lady cop, February 30, and hands us a summons for $105. Of course, neither of us ever thought of paying.

So now, as far as Florida is concerned, I was born on February 30, am a delinquent driver and banned from the roads of the Sunshine State.

One thing that the grim reaper death can never scythe away, Old Mate, are the marvellously warm and wonderfully indelible memories of such a marvellously warm and wonderfully indelible person. ■