Weeks have passed and the bruise on my knee has yet to heal. At the end of what I thought was a successful escape from a store (meaning no shopping carts toppled over, no scenes or even a mini-meltdown), we had a run in with an escalator that would constitute any mother's nightmare. Well, maybe not exactly, neither of my children were trapped or eaten by the escalator but I can confess that these images did fuel my panic in that moment.
At the time, I was not expecting any problems as my capable six year-old has often taken an escalator without incident. I even remembered to remove the child sitting in the shopping cart before I shoved it onto its own escalator thingy, so I thought I was doing pretty good. Then, with my 4-year-old on my hip and my hand out to grab the handrail, I stepped onto the escalator and expected my 6-year-old coming behind me to do the same. But she balked. She stared at the moving stairs, immobilized by the apprehension of stepping onto a moving stairway.
"MOMMMA!" she yelled.
Fueled by the thought that my child needed my protection from the scary child-trapping escalator, I turned and tried to run back up the escalator. Now, if perhaps you have never been so dumb as to try running up an escalator that is moving down, I can enlighten you: it is the most futile task known to humankind and will only make you feel like the dumbest human alive. How successful do you think I was while carrying a 30-pound child? And given my usual level of clumsiness? Not very: I fell. My child ended upon her side but thankfully did not get hurt. All the impact was absorbed. By my knee. Against the hard metal grating. Ouch.
Can I never go to a store again please? Maybe I can find a personal shopper who I could pay in kind. With children's artwork.
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