Reinventing The (Cheese) Wheel

Newfound facts about suburbia: all kids ride scooters down the street.

All the time.

So I went online and found a great scooter for Ella at Toys R Us.

Molded safety plastic, child-tested, no-slip cushioned grips.

My wife and Ella come back with a pink one. Not the one I’d called ahead and saved.

I look at Anne and she whispers, “It came with plastic sunglasses and a fake cell phone…”.

It’s true. I unpack everything on the back porch for assembly and amid tiny wheels and seat stickers there’s a small pair of pink sunglasses, matching plastic cell phone and a cute backpack.

Essentially, they bought pink sunglasses for $40 and they came with a scooter.

Newfound facts about unpacking: whatever you need most at any given time has not yet been unpacked. Like a screwdriver. For assembling oh, kids scooters?

I rummage around in the drawer and all I can find is this 3” walnut handled cheese knife. Fine, whatever.

So I’m on the back porch up to my eyeballs in an instruction pamphlet that someone in China wrote while on a noodle break, when Ella comes running over.

She sees all the gear spread out and squeals happily,

“Oh my goodness, it came with the sunglasses. And a backpack…and a cheese knife!”.