INVINCIBLE

Ryen and I were talking in early May about life lessons that don't always make sense and some that do. We were talking about how we learned them.

There is a joke in all of this because we did agree that as children, we were invincible. Notice, I say WE WERE invincible. Ryen said THOUGHT. Although it got quiet for one reason or another after I stated I was STILL INVINCIBLE. It may have gotten quiet because when one's body starts the crap shootin', you are, at least in the physical sense, no longer protected~~Yet mentally, you can still be that roaring lion.

The lesson we are talking about is riding bikes. It was pounded into my children that they WOULD wear shoes while riding a bike. There was no leeway. No arguments. Ryen thought it was because the little girl down the street got her barefoot caught in the spokes. This was a first hand lesson he learned well.

Not only from her accident but from Aaron's accident. By the time Aaron got his foot caught in the spokes, all the bikes had rat trap pedals, (metal with teeth). Aaron and Ryen used to play in the dirt while their brothers, Bud and Marty played baseball.

That isn't why I had the rule. I had the rule because I was an invincible child who had bikes with rubber petals and loved to go barefoot. And since I didn't wear shoes, the spontaneity of hopping on a bike and going for a ride was a given.

Except!!! If mother caught me. When she did, she did the same thing every time. She would show me the scar on her ankle. She would tell me about how she was riding on the handle bars of her brother Bootsy's bike and got her ankle caught and how she got this terrible infection and .....well, you get the picture. And besides....they were too poor to have shoes in the summer...although we weren't and I had shoes.

The invincible part of it was I never thought that could happen to me and I didn't ride double with someone else. What happened was, I got really tired of hearing the story over and over and soon figured out wearing shoes would stop the story and, of course, it did.

Then of course, there is this whole thing about going barefoot, which is another story for another day. Mybe tomorrow..............