Sunday, March 25, 2012

Back in the Day

Chimmie could so do this if the scooter was shorter!
We are sitting watching the 3 little kids across the street riding their razor scooters on the sidewalk.  The 6 year old boy keeps wiping out and falling hard.  Every time he falls, Linda starts off the couch to run out to see if he is OK.  He's not just tipping over, he's tumbling, crashing and sometimes flying off.  While she admires his spirit, there is no doubt that one of the falls will result in a split head or broken wrist.  Right this second (and I'm not kidding either) he has the scooter ON TOP OF 5 bags of piled bags of mulch and is trying to balance on it  The mulch is at the edge of the driveway, he appears to be ready to try to launch the scooter off the mulch bags.  OH NOOOOOOOO.  Whew, he's down safe.  Now he has his little sister laying on the sidewalk...wait, is he going to try and jump over her?  That's it, Linda is going to find the parents.

Well, the Dad was in the garage sitting on a lawn chair.  He was far enough back that Linda could not see in the shadows.  Luckily, she was able to spy him before she walked across the street to find out why they weren't supervised. (That would have been awkward.)   Maybe Linda is just too overprotective and kids should be allowed to be kids.  Back in the day when she wasn't much older, Linda would race mini-bikes through the woods, swim in water that was contaminated from the DuPont plant down the street,  sit high in the branches of the old oak tree, try and catch wild stray cats to make them pets, play on the train trestle suspended over the river and walk alone across a main street to go to the store for her Mother. All of those things are way more dangerous than falling off a scooter.