'Shuns

When I was about five or six, I stepped on a nail. It was rusty, and it went right through the sole of my shoe into my foot. I hobbled back home and showed my mother. She decided, rightfully so, that I needed to go to the clinic. So she decided to take me.

She didn't have a license and she didn't drive a car, so she decided to put me on the back seat of a bike and double-ride me. I instantly considered it a bad idea; I was still scared from my last experience on a bike. We had been riding around my neighbourhood and decided to head down into the park via a massive hill behind the Ontario Science Centre. About half way down either I froze up, or my brakes failed and I was careening, free-fall, down the side of the hill. My mother stood astride her bike at the bottom, fairly sure I would die. I didn't die. (I veered off into the brush.) But, it set me up for a lifetime of bike-paranoia.

While we're on the subject, let me say that my first time on a motorcycle, at 14, also resulted in an accident which shredded half my face and my hands and feet, and pulled the arm out of the driver, as well as breaking her collar bone. We flipped the bike, and I face-planted on the road. Charming. Truly, I hate motorcycles. Especially in Korea, watching all the riders and passengers whirring around without helmets even, it scares the crap out of me.

But that's now, and I was talking about another time, wasn't I? My mom lifted me up onto the seat of her bike and set off to double-ride me to the clinic. Within about five minutes, my injured foot had become entwined in the back spokes and we crashed: me upside-down with my one foot a nail-pierced bloody twisted mess. I sarcastically and tearfully praised her, "Way to go Mom, good idea!"
And she laughed.
Which made me want to die right there.
(She wasn't intentionally being mean, and looking back - it was kind of funny.)

Truthfully, I started off writing this post as a lesson of "how to not make things worse when they start out badly."

It relates to my week I've just had at school. Things were kind of bad, and I made them worse. I pretty much just stopped speaking to my co-workers mid week. I had reason to. And I'm fed up with them. But next week is another week and hopefully things will improve.

View, if you will, what I've written here as a "root." It might branch out in a few ways: protection, intention, and relations. What alotta "tions!" Stay tuned.