The Dangerous World of Bikes

Fantastic essay written by Pamie.

The second accident reminds me of something that happened to my daughter. I went to pick her up from school one day and she had this awful scrape on her face, just under her left eye. I was horrified. What the hell happened to my precious child? The teacher timidly approached me and said, "This happened at recess. She came to me crying and when I asked what happened, she told me that she tripped on nothing and caught herself with her face." Unlike the normal parent, I cracked up.

That was my child. Unintentionally funny and terribly clumsy. But now with a scraped face. Luckily, the scab fell off and left no scarring behind. For weeks, I was given accusing looks-- as if I had taken a cheese grater or something to my child's face, the morons-- and she was given looks of pity, mixed with digust (the scrape was not pretty!).

Since then, my darling daughter, the apple of my eye, has fallen numerous times. Mostly for no reason whatsoever. She'll be standing one minute and on the floor the next-- sometimes all without having taken a step-- shouting to us all, "I'm ok! Just fell!"

"I'm ok! Just fell!" is like a mantra around my house. We're all rather clumsy people. I, myself, have a tendency to walk into walls, counters, coffee tables, and doors. I'm covered with bruises. When I was married, I was asked if my husband was abusive. I laughed and replied, "No but the kitchen counter and that door jam are!"

It's inherited. A family trait. On my mom's side we're all crazily clumsy and gracefully bumbling. You should see family reunions. We'll pull off one amazingly graceful move only to trip over the chair leg and slam into the wall corner. We don't even notice it when it happens anymore. I can't recall how I got my bruises. I had a particularly livid one on my leg recently. I noticed it when shaving and later pointed it out to my mom. Her reply? "Heh.. Must've run into something really hard.." Mine? "I guess... I wonder what?" And then we both shrug and show off other bruises to each other. They've become badges of honor, of a sort.

I won't even get into the scars...