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Do I Still Need a Note from My Mom?
Sometimes you just can’t.
“I think the only thing stopping you is that little word ‘can’t’.”
The friendly young man stood on the mat just beyond the half-wall over which I was lopped. Behind him were all sorts of climbing and hanging apparatuses, just waiting for a willing victim who might be convinced (or embarrassed) by his coercion.
We had arrived just moments before at the old factory building. The sign out front now said it was a ninja gym. When I was a kid, we had a jungle gym. Outside. In the hot sun. It was never cold where I grew up.
We didn’t have a ninja gym.
The invitation to the birthday party for the ten-year old said parents would need to sign a waiver. I didn’t have a waiver.
The lack of a waiver wasn’t what was stopping me, either. But, the smiling young man was waiting.
Taking a moment to collect my thoughts, I gazed over the vista before me, a gymnasium filled with children from six to eleven years old — all clambering blithely (and limberly) through, and under, and over the assault course laid out in front of us.
I declined his invitation, mentioning my age and my ailing back in the same breath. He frowned at me, clearly disappointed, but I stayed where I was and he…
