Writer Recalls Dad, a Lawyer Who Warned of Peril, in Near Calamity

A magazine writer recalled his father’s warnings of peril when he had to cope with his own son’s brush with disaster during a car ride in suburban Washington, D.C.

The boy, Ichi, had wrapped the car’s shoulder strap around his neck, and he began to choke when writer Matt Bai’s attempts to help only made matters worse. In a story for the New York Times Magazine, Bai recalled the incident and his father’s long-ago warnings.

“I have feared such a moment—expected it, really,” Bai writes. “This dark impulse comes from my father, who was a defense lawyer specializing in insurance litigation—airplane crashes, building collapses, Things That Should Not Have Happened. ....

“He made rules, and the rules corresponded to whatever accordion files happened to line his shelves or clutter his memory. 'I had a case once ...' he would begin, and by the time he was finished, I had been instructed never to ride one of those Big Wheels (a kid had skidded into the street and was killed); or dive into water from anything that wasn’t a diving board (paralysis would surely ensue); or run with a lollipop in my mouth. I was not to sign up for Pop Warner football or ride my bike on busy streets.”

Reacting to his son’s predicament, Bai ran to a nearby home and asked for scissors. He was able to cut away the shoulder strap, and Ichi was unharmed.

Bai writes that his father’s rules “were merely an imperfect way of coping with the cruelty of randomness.” Still, Bai didn’t want to issue the same warnings to his son. “Ichi will not live by arcane rules of nonengagement,” he writes.