My Mom Has Labia In Spades

My mom’s gift of gab convinced me to wear girly roller skates (2/3)

And my mom has "labia" in spades.

So, I might've had the discerning power to know that the beef round didn't taste in any way like a burger, but I believed her when she told me that our roller skates were unisex.

If anyone even hinted at my roller skates being girly, I'd tell them confidently and manly as a twelve-year-old could, "They are unisex, imbécil!" And if they insisted on it, we would get into a shoving contest, and I'd shout to one of my friends, "Hold me back because I'm going to kill him."

Skating gained such popularity in Barranquilla that they built 'el patinodromo' or the rollerdrome. The rollerdrome was a twenty-minute walk away from my house. You paid a minimal fee to get in -it might've been quinientos pesos, which probably converted to an American quarter back then.

One Sunday night, my sister, my mom, a friend of my mom's, and I went to el patinodromo.

The plan was for my sister and I to make a few loops around the rink and for my mom to talk to her friend. But Rosy insisted that my mom get in the rink and skate with her. That meant I had to get out and give my mom our unisex skates.

It is obvious when someone has never been on skates because they want to stop gravity from doing its thing by pumping their arms up and down as flyless birds do.

My mom didn't have that.

She swiftly skated through the loop. Before the end of the second loop, she tripped and fell.

Laughing at someone who falls is mandatory in my family. Our family motto could as easily be, 'Laugh first, then help.' So, I made fun of my mom. But then I realized my mom was crying and wasn't standing up.

Instead, she was holding on to her right leg.

When I ran to her, we tried to help her out of the boot, but the ankle had already swollen too much to get the boot out safely without making her writhe in pain.

We called an ambulance to help us.

The ambulance took my mom to the orthopedic ER in town, just a ten-minute drive away, where she got a cast that went all the way past her knee. She also had to get surgery on it later on. One plate and four giant screws to hold it all together.

Thank you for reading the second essay in this series, "My mom’s gift of gab convinced me to wear girly roller skates."

To read the first installment click here: "Rolling Into Trauma With My Fuchsia and Magenta Unisex Rollerblades."

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