Nina In New York: Forget It, Nina, It's Scootertown.

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

For many years before I had children, my husband and I lived on the Upper West Side. And often, I would walk around the neighborhood and see kids of seemingly all ages and sizes whizzing by me on tiny scooters as they careened directly into oncoming traffic. They would inevitably be followed by a sprinting, panting, frantic parent, wheezing out threats and shouting at them to STOP AT THE CORNER! STOP AT THE CORNERRRRRRR! It was always a pretty horrifying scene to witness, and it left a pretty strong impression on me. Here's what I wrote about my thoughts on scooters back in 2014, when I was just a naive, young, foolish mother to a toddling, chubby baby:

I always swore to myself that my kid would never ever ever never never be a scooter kid. I mean, maybe he or she could tool around in an empty parking lot or in our driveway, but that would be it. And only if he or she got really good grades and wore a helmet and ate every single last brussels sprout. In the world.

I'm sure it's obvious where this is headed. As in the case of the high school op ed I wrote about how cell phones wouldn't catch on, I've had to admit that I'm not only dead wrong, but a terrible hypocrite. My daughter has a scooter. It's pink, as is her helmet, and she asked for one for her third birthday several times a day, every day, for months. Life to date, she has eaten a grand total of zero brussels sprouts. She doesn't get good grades, because she's too young to be graded on any sort of academic performance. She hasn't yet mastered the potty, but she's zipping around on three wheels like she was born to ride this wretched thing.

Most of the time, I don't mind it as much as I thought I would. In fact, it's given me a window into her personality that I hadn't yet been able to see. After the initial frustrations of realizing she wasn't literally born knowing how to operate a scooter, she became determined to learn. It's the vehicle (literally) through which we've been able to teach her the concept of practicing. When she falls, she cries for a moment, dusts herself off and gets back up. One time, she literally ate dirt in a grassy park near our house when she fell on her face. She spat and wailed for a couple of minutes and then decided she wasn't finished riding. Once she got comfortable, she started inventing little tricks to do in motion. She kicks her legs in the air, crosses her ankles, does some moves from her ballet class for which she's never shown any particular aptitude in actual ballet class. When I watch her scoot, I'm ashamed that I'd previously written her off as a klutz just like me (although she does still fall down while simply walking with comic frequency). I'm filled with pride at her grit and grace and genuine skill. Maybe this scooting thing isn't so bad, after all.

And then came this weekend, when we took her to Central Park during a family visit. She was gliding down hills, showing off her routine for her grandparents and basking in the applause. As dusk began to settle, we told her it was time to go. I said that we could scoot in the park but had to stop when we reached the exit. And then she took off like a shot, and my heart stopped beating. We all screamed at her at the tops of our lungs, but she didn't stop, and I watched her little pink helmet get smaller and smaller as the light grew dimmer and more people walked in between us and her. My husband took off running, the dog sprinting and pulling him ahead, which was lucky since the rest of us in the group were completely physically incapable of anything more than a light jog. He caught up with her at the threshold of the sidewalk where she had thankfully come to a stop on her own. I'd call that obeying the letter of the law, perhaps, but the spirit had been shot to hell. We gave her a stern talking to, she promised not to do it again, and I decided not to press it any further lest I flip the whole thing into some new, tantalizing way to get negative attention.

I had become, quite obviously, that idiot parent screaming at her kid to slow down before she ran headlong onto Fifth Avenue. Of course I had. Why should we be any different? We're still stuck with the scooter, and she still loves it more than anything else she owns or does. The only difference is that now I'm far more terrified, and now I've eaten a great deal of crow. She still has yet to eat a single brussels sprout, though.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!