I was in a group of young people (smug in their youth!) who were saying that older people couldn’t remember how to skip. So, me being an old person, and curious where the actual fuck they could have come up with such nonsense…I googled it. it seems their information, like too much of people’s knowledge today, comes from short snippets on TikTok, Facebook or some other malignant source of data (a TikTok challenge is what they quoted too). In this case, there seems to be some validity to the claim – physical and mental reasons for the inability.
For real though I see why some cannot, I never imagined my parents skipping. The thought of it now makes me embarrassed to say that I am not sure they ever could at all. Even my happiest of memories, were I to dredge them up, would not include skipping…or dancing…or hop scotch…or anything. I never saw them play sports…I do remember my mom falling on the ice in Alaska. I do remember hearing her sing a few times…she had a nice voice, but kept it too quiet…but skipping. Nah. I saw them, like these kids did me, as perpetually old. Too old to still enjoy the simplest of joys, or to just still feel twelve.
Now my body hurts (a lot), and my mind reminds me of my physical age at times…but I was sure I could still skip in that instant following their words. I told them that I had reached a point where I would never jump out of the back of a truck again; I had learned that hurts too bad…especially a moving one…but I could still skip by gosh!
Couldn’t I?
And there it was…an irrational and immobilizing fear that I couldn’t, that I would break a hip, consumed me. The 63 year old brain that had lived through surgeries, broken bones, scars, scrapes, bruises and pain said don’t you dare.
Don’t you freaking dare old man!
Images of me tearing an Achilles tendon, snapping an ankle, literally breaking a hip…or worse, just falling flat on my fat old face in front of a smug (second use of the word cause it is how I felt at the assumption) herd of kids laughing with their phones out…forever immortalized on TikTok, YouTube or whatever is the latest place my shame would exist…held me frozen.
Frozen!!
Then before they could pull out their phones, the 12 year old that keeps me alive and in constant danger daily…the me that I allow to run free as often as I physically can…said hell no and I ended a short skip up the Nashville street with a perfect (my story) pirouette followed by a most elegant and theatrical bow.
Ta-da bitches!!!! TA-DA!
Now did my ankles hurt, did my knees cry…not really what this is about so mind your own bizness.
That 12 year old inside is gonna most likely get me hurt one day. But I still cannot imagine myself as those kids saw me, as I saw my parents…perpetually old. Nope…not today.
This week I am doing a music video that may require dancing, and if I pass where someone has drawn hopscotch on the ground between here and there…I will always hop across it…I just refuse to say no yet. Not ready to try a back handspring again – I do understand the physics of those movements enough to challenge the kid in me because I do need to tie my shoes a few more years…but…
…maybe a cartwheel isn’t out of the question….hmmm….
Topwater Moon 