text: My mother is a walking miracle. I'm not kidding. She shouldn't be alive. I know what you're thinking, but no, she wasn't the only survivor of a plane crash. She didn't fight off an intruder or make a miraculous recovery from a deadly disease. No, my mom is here because someone upstairs has a sense of humour. At least I *hope* that's the reason. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence for my claim, but for today's purposes I will tell you one story. The Story of the Bike. My grandfather was stationed overseas in the late 50's at Camp King in Germany. That's a whole other story, and it even includes a song, but we'll skip that and just go into the fact that army bases in foreign countries are their own little self-contained worlds and this one was no different. Mom had made a few friends a little older than her and they all had bicycles. My mother did not have a bike. But she wanted one. She wanted one so badly that she saved her allowance and begged her parents for one for Christmas. She even planned ahead and bribed one of the neighbourhood teens to teach her to ride. This consisted of my mom peddling on the grass lawn in front of the house while the teen 'teacher' read my mom's Supergirl comic books and grunted occasionally. Gradually, Mother's skill level increased as her comic book level decreased. Finally, Christmas arrived and what does she find under the tree? A brand new bike! Oh boy! Mom rushes outside with her prize and heads out to meet the rest of the b.r.a.t.s on the base and off they go to the 'Drop.' Now every kid that doesn't live in Florida has a hill or road that serves as a catalyst for speed tricks and/or blunt force trauma but this particular hill was something else entirely. It was several hundred feet high at a steep grade and at the bottom was a 90 degree turn. Beyond this was a forest. The army kids would line up at the top and one by one, they would all shoot down at breakneck speed and come to a rest at the bottom. Mother watched excitedly and nervously as they shot down the road, seemingly flying as they navigated the hill. Then it was her turn. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and pushed off on her brand new bike. Down she went. Faster and faster! It was exhilarating! No wonder the other kids loved this so much! She held on to her handlebars as the bicycle picked up more and more speed. She was soaring now. The wind whipped past her and she saw the kids waiting at the bottom of the hill for her. They were waving. Waving? She didn't have time to consider that now, the ground under her was a blur and she wasn't slowing. Why wasn't she slowing like the other kids? The bottom of the hill was close. She could see individual expressions on her friends' faces now and they were horrified. And *why* wasn't she slowing? She should be- My mother bombed past her astonished pals and crashed full speed into the trees, destroying the bike, two bones, a whole lot of skin, and every shred of pride. She lay there, unable to get up and totally unable to understand why this had happened to her. Why didn't she stop like everybody else? As she pondered this question and tried to figure out how she was going to explain this to her dad, her friends ran up. "Susan! Susan! Are you okay?" "Why didn't you use the brakes?" My mother just looked at them. She had learned to ride a bike in the grass. The bike just ...stopped when it was done. Confused, she just said, "Brakes? What are brakes?" And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I learned that common sense is dead, it didn't die yesterday, and holy shit, that's my mom and somehow I made it to adulthood.