Over the next two hours, the same thing happened in an infinite loop – I would try to slide, appear like I got the hang of it, lose my balance when I least expected it and fall spectacularly!
The variation in the theme was the way I fell, which was aimed at hurting every inch of the body uniformly (and one section of the posterior in regularity) and also exploring all the possible ways to fall and land.
There were two notable points of my humpty-dumpty mode. Once I fell on my back with such resounding force that I knocked the back of my head, which I was trying hard not to damage in vain hopes of preventing further mental deterioration. The sheer pain pierced through the shield of my insensitive thick skin and I reacted like any other person from a cultured, sophisticated upbringing – a sustained and very loud expletive referring to the process that leads to conception. That in itself is no big deal, except that incredulous gasp of the blonde, blue-eyed 5 year old in pigtails and a pink tutu of a professional figure skater, who wagged her chubby finger at me while telling her mother (a senior version of the same physical traits, minus the pink tutu), “She used the EFF word!”
It was as if I had wantonly brought on world war III, the little one truly believed that her progenitor was going to roast me alive. Ha Ha! The benefit of adulthood includes swearing at will without worrying about repercussions!
The lady quickly shepherded the child away from me but not before giving me a scathing glance that screamed the question – You came from some distant place only to teach my child this word?
Needless to say I enjoyed this incident a lot and it made me feel a great deal better considering my injuries and aches. [Evil Rain rises and subsides]
Nothing is scarier than you sliding off with no control over your speed and direction and finding another person, as much a free agent of fate/destiny as you, coming in for an imminent collision, which is rarely (don’t go by the movies) pleasant to either party.
But the feather on that violently horrible cap would be the dash happening between you (in this case me – a heavy adult. Understated) and a small, saucer eyed child of 3.
For a moment there, I thought I was going to be an unwitting child murderer but someone up there loved the little boy who fell in my path because I slowed down and halted just millimeters away from him, swayed and leaned forward over his fallen form in my efforts to brake without doing either of the following actions which I thought were impossible to avoid:
- Knocking him down
- Falling on him in all my heavy weight glory.
Before I could gasp out a “Are you Okay?”, he scampered up and slid away as fast as he could. I hope that the trauma of falling and having my bloodcurdling visage loom in front of him in his state of daze, doesn’t affect the poor thing, although logic rules against that. All I can do is pray that the child is plucky and possibly a fan of horror.
Its not often that one gets a chance to star in the nightmares of toddlers. A truly red letter day, wouldn’t you say?
On the whole Gautam said I did really good for a novice. For now I am willing to suspend my cynical disbelief and think a contender for the 2012 Olympics for figure skating from
Ice Queen,
Rain
