After Zeke zipped around the track several times on his bike, riding at least a mile or two, I suggested for a new challenge that he could ride around the elementary school. There’s a brick walkway down the side of the school, which becomes a paved path that goes through the woods to a residential street, and there’s a paved area near the playground where kids ordinarily play basketball and run around and hang out.

I forgot that, because this was not Zeke’s elementary school, he was not as familiar with the path and the basketball court area as I was. This was his sister’s school. Also I forgot that he goes fast now, and if I don’t run behind him I am not going to be able to see him. Also I forgot that when you’re wearing a facemask it’s harder to make your shouting heard.

Fortunately on the first foray, he zoomed up the asphalt path, through the trees, and stopped just short of the sidewalk leading to the street. When I caught up to him he said, “I didn’t know where this went and I couldn’t stop!” Well, I guess he could stop, just not as soon as he would’ve liked.

So we turned around and headed back to the playground. I attempted to shout after him that he should turn right at the end of the path and loop around the paved area to go back to the brick walkway. Due to the aforementioned voice muffling effect of the face mask, he didn’t hear me. I watched him careen around the pavement and head straight toward the school. I broke into a run even before I heard the screaming.

I guess he had slowed himself down at least a little before he hit the brick wall. Apparently he thought there was another path on that side of the school, but there isn’t. Luckily he wasn’t hurt nearly as badly as Zoe was a couple weeks ago. He scraped his hand and leg and bruised his leg and tush, I think. But he screamed a lot, so I wasn’t quite sure at first what was hurt. I couldn’t carry him and his bike back to the car, but I offered to give him a piggyback ride. He declined. So I held his (unscraped) hand and walked his bike back to the front of the school. By then he had stopped crying so I left him on the curb with the bike and ran to drive the car around to pick them up.

When we got home I brought him into my bedroom for first aid. When Zoe got hurt I bought a bunch of new first aid supplies, including some different kinds of antiseptic sprays, in the hopes that they might be less offensive than our standby hydrogen peroxide. Also the store was out of peroxide. When I tried to get the cap off one of the sprays, it popped off and hit Zeke in the eye. A few more tears were shed. After I had atoned for that and successfully sprayed the scrape, I put a nonstick pad on top of the wound, because it was in one of those awkward places where no bandaid will stay. Then I tried to wrap Zeke’s hand with the kind of bandage that sticks to itself, and somehow when I tried to gently put the bandage on top of the nonstick pad, the nonstick pad flew off his hand and under the bed. Eventually we got it wrapped.

Three hours later, it is now unwrapped, but Zeke seems fine. We had a little talk about brakes, and how he needs to learn to use them. One thing at a time.