This past Sunday night the kids and I were over at my parents house for Sunday dinner, as we are every Sunday night.  Kaiden and my brother had spent quite a bit of time riding bikes before dinner.  Kaiden loves riding her bike and my brother is great at saying yes to going on bike rides with her, no matter how many times she asks.  He is the one that taught her how to ride a two-wheeler, and every weekend, he gets her up and going on it again.

After dinner, I was trying to round the kids up to start getting ready to go home.  Kaiden begged to go on just one more bike ride with Uncle Billy, so I agreed and told her they had twenty minutes.  Twelve minutes into her allotted twenty minutes we got a phone call from my brother - “Kaiden fell, get in the car and come now - we are on the 3 mile loop, bring lots of paper towels.”  My heart was in my stomach and I was in panic mode as I went running out the door with wads of paper towels, a bottle of peroxide and my keys.  Two miles away from my parent’s house, I found her and my brother on the side of the road, with a couple of other cars already stopped to see if they needed help, a lot of blood and a crying shaking little girl sitting in a driveway.  She got a little too brave on her bike and tried to hop onto a driveway that had a little too much of a lip to it and went flying.  She cut up her knee, scraped all down her leg, had a cut between her foot and leg, had road rash on both hands and she nicked her nose.

I got the majority of the blood cleaned up in the driveway and my brother carried her and put her in my car, then loaded up her bike and helmet into the car.  With all the blood cleaned up, it wasn’t as bad as it first looked.  She was visibly shaken though and I was shaken too.  I was just reading a post that a friend of mine posted about her daughter breaking her arm and she wrote the following:

“Our kids carry our hearts with them everywhere they go: school, the playground, sports games, dance recitals, doctor’s appointments, playdates, sleepovers. Every little hurt, big or small, breaks our hearts, maybe even more than theirs.”

She’s right.  I cannot explain how my heart felt when my brother first called.  I didn’t know how bad it was based on what he said on the phone, I just flew out the door and hauled butt to find them as fast as I could.  Man was I relieved when it wasn’t that bad, but it still hurt to see real pain and fear in her face.  On the way home, after a lot of “I am so glad you are okay, I was so scared” comments and telling her I loved her, I told her that I hoped that she did not let this scare her into not riding her bike again.  She responded stating that she was never riding her bike again.  I told her that when you fall off the horse, you need to get back on that horse and conquer it!!!  Her response: “Mom, (sniff) this horse has conquered me, I do not like this horse anymore!”  I chuckled at that and then I dropped the topic, dropped her at my mom’s and ran to the store to get her some big band-aids and a candy bar.

Monday night she told me that her knee didn’t hurt as bad as it did before, and that she may give her bike another chance after all - she may “conquer that horse!”  I contacted my brother and alerted him that he is on deck Sunday for bike rides and horse conquering with his niece!  He is ready!

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When I turned 16 and was legally allowed to not only drive, but get a job that would give me money, I did so immediately… well almost immediately, the summer after my birthday.  My first job was at a tourist shop on the strip down at the beach called “Holiday Department Store.”  I spent my time there folding “Virginia Beach” t-shirts, printing “Virginia Beach” t-shirts, working the cash register and stocking the store.  I worked with a great group of people and got to spend my time down at the beach, which made me happy. 

Every day, in order to get to and from work I had to drive through two ten cent tolls and a twenty-five cent toll.  The small strip of interstate known as “The Expressway,” which dead-ended at the Oceanfront, at that time, was a toll road.  It pretty much sucked having to pay this every single time I drove to the beach - which was literally just a 10 minute drive.

One day in particular, I was sitting at work, when it dawned on me that I had ZERO change on me to get home with after work, yes there were alternate routes that I could have taken to avoid the tolls, BUT at 16 years old, you took the route that had no guesswork involved in it and was a straight shot to your destination.  I remember sitting there actually thinking to myself and wondering if my Nissan Sentra would fit between the toll booth and the bar that went up and down when you paid (which by the way, I would later find out that NO, my Nissan WOULD NOT fit through that space, without getting an enormous scratch down the side - lesson learned).  When it was time to close up the store, I went outside to start wheeling in all the carts that were in the front of the store that held multiple cheapo “Virginia Beach” novelty items.  When I got to the second cart, I noticed a vinyl zippered pouch in one of the bins.

I opened the pouch and found several hundred dollars in cash AND thirty-five cents - the EXACT amount of change that I needed to get through the tolls and get home!  IT WAS AWESOME!  It was like I was meant to find that money!!!  There was nothing else in the bag, no I.D., no receipts, nothing.  I took the thirty-five cents out of the bag and totally pocketed that right then and there, then took the bag to my manager and let her know that I had found it.  She told me that she would hold it in the office for a week - if no one claimed it, it was mine since I was the one that found it - you know… finders keepers!  I knew that money would be mine, the thirty-five cents was a sign.  No one ever claimed it and I got to keep the money, which was like winning a million dollar lottery to a 16 year old.

That was my ONE lucky moment in my life and the only time I have ever found money.