When our children were little I always dreaded to see them get hurt. When they would come screaming and crying I was always apprehensive until I saw the extent of the "injury", which usually wasn't much. But what was worse then this was when we would hear a "thump" or a "bang" and then wouldn't hear them cry or call out, suggesting that perhaps they were a little more seriously hurt or maybe even knocked out.
Our son had a bicycle with training wheels. After quite some time he found his sense of balance and we could then remove the training wheels. He was really excited, so he decided to ride around the block with his sister... with both of us calling after him, "Be careful".
Off he went, lickity-split, down around the corner... with a whole lot more confidence than skill at that point. A few seconds later we heard a crash... the scraping of metal on cement. But that's all we heard... no crying, no screaming. Since we lived only one block away from a very busy street, it was hard not to imagine the worst. We "raced" down to the corner as fast as we could run, only to find him standing next to his bicycle, which was laying on the cement. When we asked him what happened, he answered, "I had to scratch my back!"
He couldn't ride and do that too, so he just jumped off the bike. What a hilarious picture! We were truly glad he wasn't hurt, but we aged about ten years!
© 2007 Arlene Schwartzkopf