The Dora bike is going to be the death of me.

Christmas before last, when Izzy was two and a half, Chris's parents got him a super-cool Dora bike. The colors are even blue and green, so it's not too girly, and any long-time readers of mine can surely remember that Dora is the girl who first stole my little boy's heart.

Well, Izzy didn't get much of a chance to ride it until the last month because it had been in storage at MamMaw's and PapPaw's since long ago when we were clearing stuff out of the house in hopes of selling it quicker. Izzy called MamMaw Judy a few weeks back, however, and after he was done accusing her of stealing his bike, he demanded it back. PapPaw dutifully brought Izzy the Huffy tricycle, from MaMa and PaPa, that his age would deem appropriate. Only his size was not appropriate, so the tricycle has now been passed on to Sophie. Another call was made to PapPaw, and he delivered the larger bike, the much loved Dora bicycle. Only now the Iz-man mostly calls it the Diego bike. Marketing, you know.

Nary a day goes by now that's not spent whizzing up and down the asphalt in front of my parent's house, blue eyes shining and not-so-little legs pumping the pedals as fast as he can go. Meanwhile, Sophie is on her little Dora big wheels, driving it Fred Flintstone style, as is Noah on his Winnie the Pooh tricycle. Oh yeah, we have a regular Dora fleet now, for Sophie's Great-Aunt Teresa just gave her a rockin' motorized Dora four-wheeler for her birthday. She's bad-ass personified, buzzing along beside the big guys.

So what's a momma to do, but to hop on her bike and grab a piece of the action? Hop I did, and I had a B.L.A.S.T! I zipped between the kids, hair flying behind me, taunting them, "Come on, guys, try to catch me!" Whoosh, I leaned to the right to avoid a head-on collision with Sophie. Swish, I did a hard left to flash in front of Noah. I was flying, wheels spinning, burning the rubber off the tires of my bike with my fancy cornering. I was squealing, the kids were squealing, we were all having a blast, when BOOM. The unthinkable happened.

I started to drop off the pavement, so I slammed on the brakes. Both the front and the back at the same time. [Actually, I didn't know that each hand brake controlled a different wheel until I was regaling my family with my acrobatic tales of today.] My brakes work quite efficiently, and my bike stopped immediately. Instantly, in fact.

I, however, did not.

I tried to stop the perpetual motion of my large body from hurtling me over the handle bars, so I tried to put my feet down to hop off the bike. The seat of my bike, however, has never been adjusted, so it was a little too high. The bike went one way, my privvies the other. Can I hear an OUCH? As I flew off the bike, in the opposite direction as a matter of fact, my left leg caught the kickstand, drawing it down into a fixed location, but not before drawing an equally large gash down my calf.

My right leg, however... you know the one... the one that's smaller and weaker and really quite fragile? Well I managed to jerk it so far apart from the other one that both of my legs made a 90 degree angle from my body. I've not been able to do that since, oh, about 10 months of age. My poor little skinny leg (No, really, I have one skinny leg. Weird, I know.) took the full force of my not-so-skinny-at-all body slamming it into the aforementioned asphalt. I tried to stop myself with my arms, but they were arms that had been steering an unwieldy bike driver around the road for about a half hour and they were tired. They tried, I know they did, but they weren't able to keep my body from thunking on the cold wet grass at the edge of the pavement. Or my face from gently coming down to rest in the grass as well.

I was giggling a little in my head, because damn, that had to have looked HILARIOUS. The giant woman takes a header, literally, while the three preschoolers, three and under, look on in horror, safely astride their little bikes. [Well, yeah. They had training wheels.] But I couldn't giggle out loud. Oh no. I had to use all my resources to lift my head up and quickly scan the street to see if I'd been spotted. Luckily enough, no.

I pulled my ACHING body up to my knees, then I used the neighbor's picket fence to pull myself on up. I was pretty surprised I was still able to stand, to tell you the truth. The pain was UNREAL. I ached like I have never ached before.

The kids all ran over to me and Izzy and Noah started frantically asking me if I was dying. I maybe told them I wasn't, but I probably said I was. I hobbled up the road into my parent's driveway, dragging my fancy bike beside me. It was a path I'd worn into their driveway many years before, and numerous bike rides before. But I'm telling you, NONE HURT LIKE TODAY'S.

I sent Izzy and Sophie in to get my mom, whom I begged for many Tylenol. Sophie brought her a washcloth that my mom wet and then handed back to her. Sophie very gently wiped the dirt from my skinny leg and from the giant bruises swelling under the skin and along my kneecap. Then she turned to my good leg and the gash, and she tenderly wiped away the blood. She pulled the washcloth away and checked her work and saw that it was still bleeding. Clearly, this called for a good scrub, which she proceeded to bestow upon my poor shredded leg.

As soon as I could see through the stars, I grabbed the washcloth and asked her if she could just hold it on my boo-boo. Very solemnly and clearly, she looked into my eyes with those big green-gray eyes and said, "Yes." Her sweet ministrations coupled with the deep sincerity of Izzy saying to me, "I'm really sorry you got hurt," helped to make me feel much better. At least emotionally, because the ol' ego took a pretty good wallop out there, not to mention my broken down and tired body.

Long story long, I'm fine. Bruised and battered, stiff and creaky, but nothing broken, not even my bike. I did learn a valuable lesson, however, about using the front brakes on a bicycle. I also got a bit of valuable advice from Izzy: "You need to be more careful, Mommy, like me."

Indeedy, I do.