Daredevil

*

Part of last weekend was spent with mom. She taste-tested avocado and mango in between preparing breakfast while I did a chore or two (or three). We sat. We ate. We talked, some. Nothing serious. Well, except for the litany of sick and death notices from around the horn of family and acquaintances.

Such seems to be her favorite pastime.

Three hours later, I grab my bag, helmet and whatever else she was trying to force me to accept, gave a hug and stepped to the door.

"Be careful," she warned as I turned the knob.

I replied, "I'm always careful, I'm no daredevil." To which she retorted, "I THINK YOU ARE!"  

I don't know what my, "are you shitting me" face looks like, but I'm sure that it was plastered on for a few moments before a shrugging of the shoulders as if to say, "whatever" and the easing on out the door, down the stairs, on onto my Brin to ride the 12 (or so) blocks home, carefully.

Her assessment has hovered about my shoulders all week. daredevil! Me. Does she really think that? And if so, why? What daredevil-like things have I done in her view? By definition I'm far from that persona, in my view anyway.

I'm an office worker for cripes sake! I do take public transportation to and fro, but so do several thousand others, she among them. I don't smoke. never have. I don't take drugs except vitamins and those needed to temper the skin issues, mostly over-the-counter. I do drink alcohol, but not in a reckless, irresponsible, ostentatiously daring manner.

I'm fucking pedestrian. Daredevil? Hell. No.

Oh sure, I've engaged in unsafe behavior on occasion in my 50 plus years, but she can't know of more than one or two of those instances. And unsafe, on occasion, does not equal daredevil no matter how you slice it, in my view anyway.

So I'm back to what constitutes daredevil in her eyes and when do I engage in such behavior?

Is it the atheism? Keeping my hair extremely short? Dating (and falling for) women? Wearing purple or striped socks? Can it be the art? The writing?  The voicing my opinion with regard to my dad, brothers, and other family members? Is it the bike riding? Is it the favoring of avocado as well as Mexican, Italian, Greek, Thai, and food of other lands? Is it the wearing of two pair of earrings on occasion but rarely a necklace? Is it the thumb ring? Is it my beliefs regarding church and state; the separation of the two? For cripes sake, I sold my rollers skates for fear of falling off them and breaking my ass.

I am so fucking pedestrian. Daredevil? Hell. No.

What then, pray-tell is it that defines me as daredevil-y?

Could it be that I'm merely different from her (and most everyone she knows) and that it wasn't the meaning for daredevil she meant to retort at all?  Could it be she meant something else altogether? And if so, what?

We'll never know. We're still working through that complicated tag she hung on a couple of years ago. We have yet to have a conversation of revelations and truths. Try as I might, that brand of dare-devilry is . . . well, like I've been saying, all along,

daredevil? Hell. No.

*artwork by daughter--age 8.