So, there we were rollerskating around the rink.  My little family was doing great.  But after awhile I told my husband my toes were completely numb.  Of course I’d brought my own skates, just as I had done every time I have gone since the sixth grade.  It occurred to me that perhaps they were now too small.  After all, it was (gasp) thirty-five years ago that I got them.  I sure couldn’t squeeze myself into my old Jordache jeans anymore.  And my feet did get larger after I had our little girl.  “Baby Doll why don’t you just get rentals?” my husband asked.  “WHAT?!” I disdainfully shrieked.  “And look uncool?!”  And then I noticed them.  “Real” skates for sale behind a glass counter with a huge crack in the top.  I looked at the black speed skates and remembered Daddy always said white skates were for young ladies.  Thinking of my father, I looked over to the white skates.  They did not have many.  The owner explained they were all pre-owned, which is why the prices were so great.  Fortuitously, they had a beautiful stark white pair in my size, which is now an eight.  The leather had barely been broken in and the stamping on the inside immaculate.  Gilding the proverbial lily, instead of the white wheels I’d always had these were in my beloved blue!!!  What are the odds?  I wound up with $350 skates for $60!  Suddenly I realized how dingy my childhood ones had become.  I was thrilled!  Plus I could feel my toes; it turns out my old ones were a six and a half!  Sitting on the toad stool as I had done so many times before, I laced up my skates and stood.  Carefully, I made my way smoothly from the floor to the rink.  I had not gone so much as ten feet when my wheels literally slid out from under me.  That had never happened to me in my entire life.  Sure, I had fallen when I was very young, but this was like some poor unfortunate unwittingly slipping on a banana peel.  My little one saw me fall and not get up.  My left wrist ballooned like an elephant in under a minute.  With a certainty, I knew it was broken.  I sat there stunned, upset to see my girl crying, and watched as my husband came rushing over.  I had been so derisive about looking uncool using rental skates.  No, uncool is watching a man twenty years your junior call you “ma’am” and help lift you up (along with your husband) while you allow yourself passively to be wheeled off the floor in shame.  I could not help but think of the scripture in Proverbs 16:18 which says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”  I wound up in the ER in traction and twelve days later I would have surgery to realign my shattered wrist, now held together with a plate under the muscle of my arm along with nine screws.  I’d never had a cast and I had never had surgery like this before.  I am still recovering and even typing this hurts.  It all just happened so fast … pride truly goeth before a fall.  I shall skate again but I have decided to put my old white wheels on my new boots; those sleek blue ones are greased lightning.