Today, We Dared

One of Frederick's favorite dvds has a short cartoon about a girl who wants a dog. It is, rather unimaginatively, called "I Want a Dog." For reasons that are never explained, she always wears roller skates. Frederick has long been intrigued by those contraptions and this past birthday I decided that I would give rollerskating with him a whirl. I went to the local "skate place" (Rollerhaven) and ordered up some roller skates. We had to get fitted and special order them. Since those places always have disco music on at top volume I thought it would be hell on wheels (so to speak) to deal with the place with Frederick, but he loved the place. He was dancing and jiving all over the lobby while I waited for the manager to get his shit together. (Simon, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic about the place and begged to be allowed to leave so he could sit in the car and wait.) Finally, the skates arrived and fit like a dream. It's a beautiful day today and the Davison skate park was the perfect place to try them out. Frederick is normally VERY CHATTY in the car but, once I explained to him what we were doing, he became very thoughtful. When we got there, he said to me, "Frederick CALM" which is his way of saying, "I'm VERY ANXIOUS RIGHT NOW!!!!" I told him we would just put on the skates, ride once about the skate park, and then we would take off the skates and head to the car. The first trip around, Frederick clung to me as if his life depended on it. I have 10 fingerprint marks on my upper arm. But when we looped about and got to the picnic table where his sandals waited for him, he didn't want to stop! We went around (with him getting increasingly confident--by the 5th circle he was only resting the fingertips of one hand on my arm), chatting about this and that. During the last loop he started singing softly, "I want a dog...."