An Excellent Faller

Miles has a new Spiderman scooter. It's very snazzy -- silver, blue and red with a holographic foot board and a Spiderman "shield" between the handlebars. He got it from his Mama Kay, as a present for his 3rd birthday.

Kudos to the scooter engineers, because this dangerous-looking toy is actually well-designed for toddler use. It's very stable, and it steers with little pressure. This, of course, makes Miles think he is Evel Keinevel. He zips around the back patio (more truthfully described as " big concrete patch") and circles the garage like he's headed for the X Games.

The other day, as I was standing in the back doorframe, I caught sight of him cruising along, one foot firmly planted, one foot pumping for locomotion. "Buddy! Look at you!," I said. "You are an excellent rider." Just then, he jerked the handlebars (to look at me?) and the whole apparatus tipped. Miles' wrist went out to break his fall (an act which gave me flashes of exposed bone and the ER). Then -- almost in slow motion, as a Star Trek special effect missing only the transporter hum -- the boy and the scooter which were a vertical line reconstituted themselves into a horizontal pile. Without a pause, Miles stepped out from under the bars, pulled himself up and righted the scooter. "Yeah, I am!" he said back. "And I am also an excellent faller!"


Dear God: May we all fall as well as this little boy. May we count our skills many; may we see our every stumble as part of a greater victory. May we quickly stand after every fall, and may we always rejoin the race before us. "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal...."
Amen.