On the Edge of my Seat

So I'm sitting here, and I will be for the next couple of days, though even that is painful. Pierre says I should have known better, at my age (he really did, he likes to live dangerously, that husband of mine.)

Arthur, six, offered to teach me to skate board yesterday. He had me sit on the steps of the garage while he demonstrated, and then it was my turn. Wee! Just like when I was seven and the champion of the downhill skateboard race in the neighborhood. I took a few tentative passes around the garage floor and it felt good. I then tried the drop from the step I had been sitting on, cool. Easy stuff. Then Arthur gave me a detailed lesson on "dropping" off the edge of the little, tiny, baby-sized ramp the kids use to bike and skate on.

He told me over and over that you had to hold the board at a certain angle and then "put all your weight forward, if not you will slip, and it's really slippery, like really." He made it look easy, and fun enough to tempt me. Fool! "No fool like an old fool!" My mind may think my body can do this, but my mind is no longer six and fearless. My mind, somewhere in there, knows better. I held the board, shifted my weight forward and dropped, right onto the cement floor on a sensitive part, the board merrily flying across the way free of me. Guess I was holding a large part of me back. Ouch.

The moral of the story; what you may be able to do with ease could be a lot less comfortable, simple or even doable for your child. I will dwell on this each time I sit down (ever so gingerly) for the rest of the week.