Clutz

My daughter thinks I'm a clutz. Actually she knows I'm a clutz. I prove it over and over. I may have always been one or it may have started with my bicycle. I don't remember who taught me to ride, probably my dad, but I remember having a 26 inch bike, a big one, blue, no gears or anything like that..just a big blue girls bike. It was my horse, some days I pretended it was a big black stallion and other days it was a palamino. I did some of my best pretending on that bike.

I loved that bike. But when I pretended too hard and rode too fast, it didn't like me. One day I came speeding down the street by the house, hit some gravel and slid. I knocked a big hole out of my knee. Mom is a type A personality and was hysterical; the blood the hole in the front of my knee, but most of all she worried about what it would look like under my Easter dress...go figure. The scabs came, they started drying up...it looked like the scab would fall off before Easter.

Then one Saturday we went to work in her room at school. We took my bike and while they worked inside, I rode the bike outside on the parking lot. It was a blacktop and was nice and smooth and empty. I rode round and round and soon was lost in my make believe world of horses weaving imaginary stories in my head. I didn't see how close to the blacktop edge I was getting. Finally, I went too fast, too far and the wheels slipped off the blacktop onto the ground and I went flying off. I got up to find blood streaming down my leg...yes, I knocked the scabs off, one week before Easter.

I went inside crying and they patched me up. So, I went back out to the bike. That was a mistake. I hadn't been riding more than fifteen more minutes when I did the exact same thing. You would think that with a large empty parking lot, I could stay away from the edge, but no, not me. This time I knocked the bandage off and my parents were so put out that they confiscated the bike and put it up until the knee was totally healed. Alas, I was relegated to a broom as my horse for the duration.

So, a "clutz" is born.