peter
“I prefer when people just ask and we get it out of the way, it’s much better than when they assume what happened and feel sorry, that’s the worst… It was an accident when I was two-years-old, my brother was three-and-a-half… We were just coming home after grocery shopping with my parents and they got out of the car to unload the shopping. We stayed in the car, just messing around closing all the doors and then suddenly the car just exploded… That’s it, not a big story… It was a fault in the mechanism of the engine of that particular type of car. There was a big lawsuit from people all around the world about it. We both had third-degree burns on 70 per cent of our bodies so it was pretty serious. We were in the hospital for six months straight after the accident and I was like 14 when I had my last operation. Looking back, apart from the many, many hospital visits, we were brought up pretty normal, we never had an issue with bullying or anything, but it certainly gave us a different perspective about not putting a label on our own abilities. I don’t think we were ever allowed to feel restricted from doing anything in life. We were brought up with a mindset of; if you want to do something, there is nothing to stop you. Which is probably why I became the person I am today…”