And the little one said “rollover!”
"Calculate the rollover risk / of a sedan weighted with fries / on three carpets” OctPoWriMo 2024, Day 22
Calculate the rollover risk of a sedan weighted with fries
on three carpets, and the debris of lunches past, and airbag zones
muffled by the landfill of flung jackets. A hydroplane is not a seaplane, silly.
You won’t be flying off this frozen lake out of a skid. But factor in the buoyancy
of four young lungs, the weight of a half- tank of gas, and the grip strength
of parents like us, who cling to the edge of the bed when little ones join.
They insinuate themselves after their heat-seeking spacewalk. Static stability is,
by far, the single best predictor of rollover risk.
So the Coriolis Effect doesn’t carry us too far
off course as we more or less circle around the things that we want.
© Tolu Oloruntoba
Notes
Portion in italics quotes from “The Methodology for Predicting Rollover Risk” by Ellen S. Hertz, Ph. D., National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
I wrote an erotic vampire story called the Coriolis Effect :)