Scraps and scars

When I was in school, I was a walking (pun intended) irony. I was a school athlete. But I was not allowed to do PE. I was kept like a pristine racehorse. Only allowed out onto the track to race and then back to the stables. The rationale was that it would reduce the possibility of me getting injured. Apparently, despite the fact that I could run very fast, I could only do that in a straight line and at any other time, looking at a tree root would cause me to trip and fall.

 I haven't thought much about it in years but I did today.

I'm at the tail end of my parent volunteering at Jordan's future school. And today, while trying to scale a rock to feed the fish in the pond, I slipped on the algae-slippery rock. This caused me to dump a great amount of fish food into the fish pond and scrap my knee, shins and bruise my butt. Thankfully, there was no real falling into the pond.

I spent the rest of the day hobbling around and feeling extremely sympathetic for my children who often get into scraps and end up with war wounds like that.

Of course, in the eyes of the grandparents, for the boys it doesn't really matter since they are after all, boys. But for Jordan, it is of utmost importance that she doesn't get lasting scars that will stay with her for life, especially if they end up on her face.

Unfortunately, no one sent me the memo. These knees, while they haven't been this scrapped this bad since primary school, have more than their fair share of scars; falling into drains, hitting the hurdles and scrapping my legs while crash landing, cycling, rollerskating (not blading) and many other scars. And my thought bubble to the grandparents has been ,"But I managed to score quite a man, despite being scarred all over!"

The question is whether I would let JED go through the same scraps? And this led to the question of what sort of sport JED will play. I had recently come to the conclusion that even though I come from long and proud history of rugby players, I would not want any of my kids, including Muffin who looks like he was born to play rugby, anywhere near that game (Sorry Bro!). The memories of the broken head, torn ligaments and back injuries that require surgery are just things that I don't want in our kids' future.

The Bestie and former track queen of school agrees that her boys will not play contact sport even though she lives in the land of footie and rugby. Her explanation was that despite the fact that we got injuries that covered every single muscle from back down to toes, the injuries were not contact inflicted and therefore not as serious (on days where I can tell the weather in my bones, I beg to differ.)

I don't think I could bring them in a bubble. But then again, if their mother is anything to go by, they don't really need to play contact sport to get themselves into painful scraps.


Technorati Tags: pre-schoolers, injuries