Broken Bones, Scabbed Knees and Steel Resolve

by Melissa
(Vancouver, BC)

Broken Bones, Scabbed Knees and Steel Resolve

I am not the biggest person in the world, but I am often the one who can’t shut her trap. I am not possessed of an off switch either- if it sounds fun I will give it a try, at least once. I have wrecked a bike because I was told you cannot hit a particular curve at a particular speed. The first time that I managed to squeak by with my life should have served as the caution, but it only flagged my inner demons to try it again only faster. My first words when I came to were “did I make it?” The doctors actually laughed at me.

I take on challenges great and small with a vivacious appetite for life or self destruction; I have not quite figured out which. I got into a fight with a woman much larger than me over a pair of ugly shoes. To this day I swear those were the ugliest shoes I had ever seen. And to this day I swear I did not know she could hear me. I stayed on my feet the whole time, darting and ducking and thanking goodness that I was so short and so nimble. Had she gotten hold of me, I am proud but not stupid, she would have cleaned my clocks, but good. I made it out of that with a slight shiner and a really good story to tell.

My friend Tim is a giant of a man. He stands over a foot taller than me. The bike he rides is ginormous. Some fool felt compelled to tell me that I couldn’t ride it. Note to my friends and family: never say couldn’t, instead say shouldn’t; I can accept that word far more gracefully. Let’s just say that the little angel on my shoulder fell off a long time ago, unable to keep up with me and my headstrong, reckless ways. Let’s also just say for the record that anyone who cares about their bike does not let someone half their size ride and wreck it. The nasty comment he wrote on my cast included the phrase “paint job” although I don’t think I could technically do it in the manner that he suggested.

I have broken bones, scabbed my knees and gotten my eyes blacked. I once wore what looked like a skid mark on my chin for an entire month. Seeing that I was a bridesmaid just a few days after the event in question, it’s a wonder I lived at all; the bride, a non-biking, non-daredevil woman, did not understand.

Through all of this, there has been one thing that is always true and always firmly in place. I have a steel resolve that starts at the top of my brassy blonde head and ends with my apparently nerves of steel. I am off; someone said they were giving free skydiving lessons at the airfield.