Scooby Don`t

There are so many things I want to do before I die. I want to publish a book and paraglide in front of Mount Everest and trek through Nepal and get an A level in a foreign language and be adopted by a stray kitten and be adopted by a stray child and sleep in a blanket in the desert and fall in love and visit a hanging monastery in China and scuba dive without panicking and be bought the perfect piece of jewellery without picking it first and stand up on a surfboard and see a geisha and a red squirrel and a wild polar bear.

And I have always, always wanted to own a scooter. Even though they scare me. Perhaps because they scare me.

"I`m getting a scooter," I told my dad.
"No, you`re not," he said.
"Yes I am."
"No, you`re not."
"I am."
"God, you`re so pigheaded."
"Yes, I am."
"Just like me."
"Yes, I am."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my mum.
She cried.
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my best friend.
"Do you know yourself at all? Like, at all?"
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my sister.
"Oh for fuck`s sake."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told Harai.
"Because you are -" and then he held his finger up to his head and twisted it a few times.

So - because I`m nothing if not pigheaded - I got one. Or, more specifically, Shin gave me his old one. And - even though he asked me very nicely "not to pimp like girl" - I pimped like girl. I gave it a stripy seat and gold fish stickers and a little diamante cross. I went on the internet and ordered reflective red stars so that I would be visibly cool at night time. I scrubbed it and patted it and sang to it and I named it Scooby. And I pottered around on it all weekend: down to the beach, to the shops (when I didn`t actually need anything from the shops: I just wanted to drive to the shops), round and round the back streets at 30kph like a little old lady joy rider, wearing my pink coat and the white helmet with permanent marker drawings all over it. Bursting with pride because I was so free, and so brave, and proving everyone and their assumption in my crapness so wrong.

And, today, I was going to tell my parents that I had, in fact, got a scooter. And that - contrary to expectations - I was extremely capable, sensible, good at driving and unlikely to die at all.

This morning, I crashed it.

The drive to school is a long one: 20 km through rice fields. But I was careful. Heeding Shin`s advice ("take it eeeaaazzzy, Noppo"), I took the back roads, I stayed in the middle of my lane, I indicated and checked my mirrors, I never went above 30km an hour and I only put my iPod in one ear so that I could hear whatever incandescent road rage was happening behind me. I added an extra 5ks to my trip to avoid the roads with trucks, and I sat properly so that my posture was exemplary. And when I got to school - about 50 minutes later - I was absolutely full of it: specifically drove past the entrance so that I could give the clustered teachers and students a little regal wave, and then turned into the car park to put my pretty, pimped up bike somewhere prominent. Turned it off, took my helmet off and grinned at about twenty (awestruck, I thought) open mouthed teenagers.

"You can`t park there," one of the teachers shouted at me. "You can park nearer the school, in the bike area."
"Okay!" I screamed back gaily, holding my helmet under one arm like they do in the films and flicking my messy blonde hair the way they also do in films (despite the fact that it was stuck to my head, which it absolutely never is in films).

And then I turned it back on and shot into the fence.

In fact, I didn`t just shoot into the fence. Terror and humiliation caused me to hold on to the accelerator - instead of letting go (who knew?!) - and so I shot into the fence, and then powered myself into the cement water ditch running along side it. The bike mangled with the fence, got stuck in the ditch; the helmet crashed to the floor, and - in the meantime - Harai was pegging it across the carpark shouting "Hollllllllyyyyyyyy!!!"

By the time I had finally worked out that I had to stop accelerating into the fence, the front basket had been ripped off the front of the bike, I was bright red and shaking like a leaf, and every single one of my students and colleagues was open mouthed for an entirely different reason.

"Are you hurting?" Harai said as he pulled up next to me, absolutely horrified.
I covered my face with my hands.
"No. But I couldn`t be more pissed off with myself if I tried. I am such a loser."
"You look quite cool before bang, though," he reassured me. "Nice pink coat."

I`m so sorry, I emailed Shin as soon as I had stopped trembling and swearing. I broke your bike.
ARE YOU OKAY? he emailed back.
Yes. But the bike isn`t. I mashed up the basket.
Don`t worry. The bike is indifferent.
Yes, I replied drily. That bike is totally indifferent.

It doesn`t matter what I do. It doesn`t matter how careful I am, or how slow I go, or how brave I am: I am crap. Inherently, genetically crap. And while I`m not giving Scooby up, I`m going home tonight and I am insuring myself up to the hilt. Because while I can`t let my inevitable crapness stop me from doing things - otherwise my life will be as terrible as my skills are - I can certainly make sure that when both my legs are broken, somebody else is paying for it.

Owning a scooter might be on my list of things to do before I die, but if this morning is anything to go by that might be sooner than I hoped. And that irrational fear of scooters? It might be a little more rational than I thought. Which only gives me one more reason to keep going: the conquering of all things that scare me.

That, and being totally and utterly pigheaded.