A little back story: at the beginning of the year I bought myself a walking pad (thanks to a Sale and Giftmas money from GG and PJ) because so much of my life has become sitting and I really REALLY need to move my body more. I have it set up in the living room so that I can work and walk, off and on throughout the day. I have had many conversations with my child about "we do not touch this", "this can potentially hurt you", "this is mommy's, not *Name Redacted*'s" etc.
I even let her experience walking on it, with me right beside her the whole 2 minutes it kept her lil 3 year old squirrel brain attention. And it's honestly worked pretty well so far, until the other night, that is.
Now, I should mention that one of the things about "walking pads" is that they are often less expensive than your traditional treadmill, but also less advanced, less bulky, and have fewer features; what I mean by that is they have fewer safety measures.

Handrail? Nope!

Kill Switch or tether? Lol, no.

Any kind of guard to keep things from getting pulled underneath the belt? Pffffft who needs that?!

Me... It's me, I need that.

Another note-worthy piece of information; my little darling has this bright rainbow-colored ball that is very reminiscent of classic dodgeball in size, shape, and most importantly... sound.
And on the evening of this particular moment, I was walking/working while my hubby made dinner, and the kid watched some Bluey; or so I thought.
Imagine my absolute dread when I heard the classic dodgeball *sound*, you know the one, directly behind me. I turned to look just in time to see my adorable agent of chaos shove the ball into the end of the walking pad's belt, where it promptly got yanked underneath and effectively turned my walking pad into the kind of floor you might find in a super sketchy carnival "funhouse".

Dear reader, I can not even begin to describe the sound that emanated forth from the very depth of my soul as I fought for my life before leaping off of the (now wildly bucking) walking pad; but I can assure you, with every fiber of my being that it was an incredibly undignified sound.

I'm honestly not sure how I managed to make it safely off the tiny localized earthquake, but manage it I did!
After some incoherent noises, meaningful eye-contact with my very confused hubby (who had come to see what the commotion was all about), and more than a few deep breaths... a quiet and calm conversation was had with *Name Redacted* about how that was really not a good choice, it was a pretty terrible choice in fact, and momma could have gotten hurt, and let's not ever do that again, please, and thankyouverymuch

But, seriously... WTF, kid?!