Scribe and the Evil Skip-It

It looks innocent. Don't let it fool you. It's evil in lemon packaging.

I may have mentioned my tousle with the evil skip-it but I don't think I've told the story with all of the gory details. The writing prompt for Studio 30 Plus suggested we talk about our family gatherings this past Easter Weekend. There were no skip-its this weekend, but the misshap did occur one fateful day after Easter Sunday.

It was an Easter Sunday like many other. I was with my parents having dinner at my brother's house. My neice and nephew were outside mucking about, riding their bikes and skipping. At 35, I felt still nimble and quick so I had a turn on the skipping rope and it went exceedingly well. It was like riding the bike and I demonstrated the skipping skills I had perfected in my childhood and through a few years of boxing. Even June Cleaver got in on the act and showed my neice how at 73, she could still wield a mean rope. The Skip-It came out next and I slayed it, jumping circles around my neice who still couldn't believe that her grandmother and aunt not only knew how to skip but had once owned both a skipping rope and a Skip-It (called a Lemon Twister in my day, but the premise was still the same).

Fastforward to the next day. Still confident from the previous day's experience, I grabbed my Skip-It out of the basement and had a few turns around the living room. It felt like a fun way to exercise and it was a nice day so outside I went. I set myself up for the first step, not looking at the uneven patio stones that had shifted during the winter months. One skip, two skip...

And then Scribe was down. For the count and for about four months after. I had landed wrong on one patio stone. Actually it was two patio stones with one of them being uneven. My ankle buckled, twisted, turned and it was over. Embarrassed and incredulous that I had forgotten I was indeed accident prone, I removed my shoe (mistake number 2, the first was actually touching the Skip-It again). It swelled instantly and I could no longer put my shoe back on. I was also very stoic and told myself to "suck it up Princess" and went about my day like nothing had happened.

Denial.

My denial caused me to think that it was the perfect time to continue with the housekeeping  chores that I had already started. A sprained ankle couldn't keep me down, but apparently a chipped bone can.

As my doctor and subsequent x-ray revealed that my fifth lucky sprain on that ankle had also resulted in a chipped bone and four months of swelling. Purple, blue, black, yellow... my ankle went through many stages, and to this day, it still pains me when it rains.

I should have known it would end badly, as did the speed bump, roller skating evening and escalator. And, while those other things happened a long time ago (and still proves my landlubber's ineptness), the fact that I was 35 and playing with a Skip-It makes this one instance even more monumentous. Just ask Anasatan who keeps threatening to buy me lemons as a present. I just turn it around and make lemonade and I stay away from any Lemon Twisters. They're evil, you know.