ROBOT SMALL

Today Ivo and I were at the park in Berkeley... there is a big big big HUGE slide there.... So big and huge that even I was scared the first time I went down it. It's a big yellow monster slide that is like a large plastic sewer tunnel, but leading to hell, and it's probably fun if you are about 4 feet tall, but regular sized humans get stuck in the first curve and then have to pull their legs up and rocketeer down the rest of it, bumping their fragile hips, and brittle bones and sciatica and all those things that regular sized (old) humans have.

Well, ol' Phoebe, I mean ol' Ivo, brings me to the top of the slide, and we go down it several times (with him riding on my lap). Then he decides that he wants to go down it all by himself. Now this kid is BARELY two years old, and it is clearly total madness to let him go down this slide. But I am having the kind of day where I feel that my parenting strategy should be to let him learn things for himself.. as long, of course that there is no REAL damage. There is no possibility that he will be seriously hurt in any way on this slide. So I let him go.

BAD MOVE, MAMA. He tumbled down it... how he gets to the bottom I don't know because the slide is shaped like a tube. He could have been end over end for all I know. I feel TERRIBLE. I rush to the bottom and try and comfort him. He is crying (of course) because he has just been down a terrifying ride on a par with me going on that acid-green thing at Six Flags that fucked up my neck for a month. But as the crying subsides, he leans against my chest and sighs. "Mama, I want to do it again, Mama."