This Is Why I Don't Roller Skate

Or "do" the trampoline.

It's the klutz and recovery problem.

For example: yesterday, I drove to town in the rain for a doctor's appointment, and parked, in the rain, across the street from the clinic.

I walked, in the rain, across the street, and stepped over the gutter water onto the curb.

As I stepped from the curb to the sidewalk, my right foot, missing the actual cement block of the sidewalk and stepping instead on the grass that had been sitting all day in the rain, slipped on the gooey muck that the grass had become, in the rain.

Since my right foot had taken the leap, it being a good stretch for my little legs, my left foot was in motion before my brain registered the sliding of the right foot, and before you can say "Tut, tut! Looks like rain!" I found myself in a strange, twisted, half supplicating position on the sidewalk. In the rain.

It may or may not have been a good thing that I chose to wear shorts and sandals, in spite of the rain.

On one hand, I didn't get my jeans dirty or end up with shoes covered in mud.

On the other hand, I entered the clinic with a grazed knee and a decidedly squidgy-sounding walk after stepping back to the street and rinsing my sludge-covered toes off in the ditch water that had gathered in the gutter, and which I had been trying to avoid in the first place.

That would be the Klutz problem.

The stiff knees, painful, jammed toe, pulled muscles and aching back would be the recovery problem.

I expect it will last a few more days. It usually does.

Yeah.

So, if  you invite me ice skating or roller blading or paint-balling and I graciously decline, don't take it personally.

It's like I tell my kids:

I bruise easily and heal slowly.