I was sitting, looking at Robert while he cooked hamburgers, and my eyes wandered and settled on the white scooter. Sitting there with a breeze blowing, I thought, “Hey, I’m going to ride that thing.” And I did. First I had to manhandle it out of the garage past all the paraphernalia of the cafe & roadhouse and then I turned on the key and pushed the start while holding the brake and . . . nothing, nothing at all.

Well, there was more than nothing; I exaggerated. There was a bit of a rumble. What I was not doing was revving up enough to make the scooter move, because if it moved, I might crash – in my own driveway, into my own car.

Then I got the courage and ZOOM I was outta there; I had forgotten the feel of the throttle and when I went for it, I really went. You know how when you want to stop in a car, you push your foot away from you. There is a reason they say throttle back on a scooter.

Yes, I was going to stop and I went FASTER and then I did what I had learned, not what was instinct. I think the panic of a “what the hell is happening” situation helped me cultivate the instinct to rotate my hand back on a scooter.

Car: push brake.

Scooter: pull back on throttle.

The breeze caught my hat and it blew off. Yes, I had forgotten the helmet. Well, at the beginning I was just going to see if it started and maybe putter down the driveway.

This would be the part in my story where someone can cue the ZOOM effect.

Summer greeted my return with, “What do you think you were doing, riding without a helmet?” I said, “I lost my hat.” I believe that started a non sequitur  ping ponging effect in her brain and bought me some time. I was already going in the house when I heard, “Hey, wait a minute.”

It’s true, though, I did lose my hat because I figured after my ZOOM, I wasn’t going to fool around thinking hat when I needed to think throttle.

Now I need to clean the grilling grease off the white scooter, because my one thought not dealing with scooter survival was, “Gosh, this thing looks tacky.”