Several years ago, for my boyfriend’s birthday, I bought us a pair of matching push scooters. Not the adult-sized ones, which are LAME, but the kiddie-sized ones, which adults can use at their great peril due to said kiddie-sized scooters’ not being designed for adult-centres-of-gravity, and are AWESOME due to their sheer likelihood of DANGER.
.
Some will say the gift was selfish— go ahead, point your fingers! He and I had a few delightful scoots around the neighbourhood, and thereafter I was pleased to use mine as an actual mode of transportation for those times when I could PROBABLY walk there in the alotted amount of time but really a little scoot would ensure total on-timedness. Because that is what adults do.
.
And then a bunch of stuff happened: I got a car, moved around to various continents where scooting because less of a priority, developed a chronic bum muscle hurtiness. But now I’m back in a downtown Toronto apartment for a month… an apartment without any parking. Thus, re-enter my scoot.
.
I took it out for a spin today, as it was reeeediculously hot and I was in those “scoot-and-you’ll-make-it” kind of timing scenarios. I was reminded of the following things, that I had forgotten about riding my push scooter:
.
1. One must have THIGHS THAT CAN CRUSH WALNUTS or else AN ANVIL OF GOLD if one is to stay upright and in a straight line on a scoot.
.
2. Sidewalk cracks: Not our friends. You know how when you learn to drive they tell you to look far into the horizon if you want to keep driving straight? DON’T DO THAT. Eyes directly in front of you, watching out for those sidewalk cracks, or your mutha’s back ain’t gonna be the only thing requiring one of them hot/cold pads, fool.
.
3. People will stare at something so WHIMSICAL as a scoot passing by, so try to smile whilst taxing those thighs of yours. Or to look hip and happening. Ooh, so crazy and in demand I am, I’m too cool for walking!
.
4. You will feel you are not moving fast enough, but you are moving faster than if you were walking, so just try to live in the now, man.
.
5. You will enjoy a breeze of which mere pedestrians can only dream. It is the breeze of delight and it exists only on the precipice of disaster (at falling on sidewalk cracks) upon which you teeter. THIS IS WHAT LIFE TASTES LIKE. Savour it.
.
6. Let’s be real: it is important to sport a handbag with weight equally distributed across both shoulders— one shoulder bags are a no go for scooting. (Once I made this mistake, tried to re-adjust mid-scoot, and totally wiped out on a residential street on a quiet Sunday morning. For some reason the only sound I could emit was the extremely contrived-sounding, “CRUD,” which is an embarassment I constantly recall to this day.)
.
Happy Scooting! And now, I shall go ice my quads.
Brianna Goldberg 