All that comes with it

Amy fell down the stairs today. Twice. The second time was more serious. We were on an escalator in Habitat and by a complicated series of events her feet were carried off one way and her upper body the other. She ended up tumbling down three or four steps and taking the skin off her shin. On the bright side however I got to run down an up escalator, which has been one of my ambitions since I was about eight.

It took about fifteen minutes of sitting on overpriced display furniture and admiring her bravery and battle scars before she felt ready to move on from the experience. I was tempted to ask a member of staff for a first aid kit, but it’s doubtful that they would have had plasters with Winnie the Pooh on them. Like many children Amy is reluctant to have faith in the medicinal prowess of any bandage that is not tied in with a major merchandising franchise. I hope her generation are able to grow out of this attitude or else we are going to eventually have to invent Bob the Builder heart pacemakers and Dora the Explorer hip replacements.

Hopefully her accidents today will not have dented her confidence too much. Amy has always been a cautious child, ever mindful of the potential to slip, fall, or stumble. She’s always approached new physical experiences with the risk aversion attitudes of a veteran of a bomb disposal squad. This can be both reassuring and frustrating. Reassuring because you can generally trust her not to fling herself off the edge of a cliff to see if she can fly, but frustrating because you frequently witness her missing out on things because she is afraid to give them a go. To be honest she probably takes after me in that regards. For example, since I was around eight I’ve wanted to run down the up escalator, but it’s only now at the age of thirty one I plucked up the courage to do it.