I don’t know when I started paying attention to them, hanging cords and untied shoes. I used to carry any object with the cord dragging, dancing between my shoe laces. Never a thought to tripping down stairs or driveways. Those same laces dangling around hungry bicycle chains. And with equal ease, I played “I wonder if my hand could fit in there,” or “would my tongue stick to that.” 

I don’t suppose I ever stopped taking chances, but somewhere along the way, the risk of elbows and knees were transferred, and it was my heart and brain that I let dangle free in unchartered territory. 

Maybe age has given me too much vision, and sometimes I catch myself, as my heart’s shoelace bounces against the teeth of the moving chain, but joyfully, my childish unawareness takes over, wins out, and I only feel the breeze in my hair, and every part of me says, Let’s ride!!!!

As the day begins, my still tender lips whisper, “I wonder if….”