Evel Knievel Rides Again!

No sooner were the boys off the school bus (we weren’t even in the apartment yet) when it started:

“Mom! Can we please ride our bikes outside for a little while? Please?!?”

“Yeah, Mommy, please?” piped in Tre.

I couldn’t say no (naturally) and figured after they were out in the cold for a while it would wear them out and maybe they wouldn’t fight and argue so much when they came in (yeah right). Let them pretend to be little Evel Knievels for a while and wear themselves out.

“Okay, Okay, but just for a little while! Zip up your coats and put your hats on, it’s cold out there.” I am, after all, gunning for the Good Mommy Award of the Year.

The bikes are pulled out of their corners and the boys go riding off into the sunset, so to speak. There isn’t a single other soul outside. No adults, no children. Just us crazies.

They go around the parking lot for a little while until Donathan and his brother come zooming around the corner on their bikes and ask the boys if they want to go ride on the basketball court for a while.

So we traipse over to the basketball court. I call The Man Thing and tell him we’re outside. I couldn’t understand half of what he said because the reception on the phone just got worse the farther away from the apartment I walked (so I walked faster). I think I caught something about it being cold out, bundled up, I don’t know. I yelled into the phone he was breaking up and I couldn’t hear him and I’d call when we got back in the house.

Round and round they went till they got bored with that. Donathan took his bike off the sidewalk and into the parking lot (just a little jump) but naturally Tre saw it and had to try it. He made it, barely. Jonathan, however, disappeared.

When I turned around he was at the top of a small incline with the other boys. The other boys, who are older and have more weight on them, came down the incline on their bikes and jumped the curb and landed on the pavement wheels up, grinning from ear to ear.

I saw disaster where Jonathan saw adventure.

“Jonathan get off that hill NOW!” I yelled.

Unfortunately I didn’t specify HOW he was to get off the hill.

I turned my back to help Tre for a split second. When I turned back around, there was my son, sprawled on the pavement and the bike on its side.

Disaster had struck.

He tried to jump the curb. And missed.

I ran over to him and asked him if he was alright and he shoke his head no. He had tears in his eyes, but Donathan was there and he didn’t want him to see him crying so he put on a brave face and held it in.

“I’m ready to go in the house now Mom,” he said.

“You sure you’re okay? Did you break anything? Can you stand up?” He was still sitting on the pavement.

His bike suffered minimal damage, his little WildCard license plate had come undone, but that’s something Dad can easily fix.

Jonathan, however, said he bruised both of his knees and his “middle” and he pointed to his groin. Apparently the force of the bike coming off the curb from down the hill jarred his little personal area but good. He was limping. Walking really slow too.

He walked his bike home.

We got him in the house, eventually. Tre, originally ticked off because we had to come in, developed a morbid curiosity to see if JJ broke a bone and if it was sticking out.

God help me.

“No Tre, he did not break anything. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to walk and Mommy would have had to carry him into the house.”

“Oh, well what’s wrong with him then?” he asked.

Upon inspection, Jonathan bruised both of his knees up but good. The right knee received the brunt of the fall and has a bruise already forming the size of a small football on the side of his knee. His left knee apparently hit something on the bike and only has a small black and blue mark on it.

But boy is he going to feel it in the morning!

So I gave him some pain medication to try to keep it from hurting too terrible bad and he is now in his room licking his wounds so to speak.

A few moments after the medical examination he said to me, “Why couldn’t Santa bring me a skateboard for Christmas? I didn’t even want a stupid bike.”

“What do you mean you didn’t want a bike? That’s all you’ve harped about for like the last year – I want a bike, I want a bike!”

“Well now I don’t. I want a skateboard.”

“You can fall off of a skateboard and get hurt just as bad, if not worse, as on a bike.”

“Well get me a scooter then. I can’t fall and get hurt on that.”

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