Itchy Feet

        

        I must have been born with itchy feet. 

        Since I can remember, I've been on the go. For me, it started early; earlier than I remember. My Mom told me this story.

        I was one; perhaps one-and-a-half, and she decided to take me to the beach. When she got there she laid out a blanket and hoisted me out of my fourteen-stone pram. I've seen some photos and I can tell you I looked like an Elizabethan, lady-in-waiting, bonnet and all. (The shame of it!)

        No sooner had Mom laid me down than I was off! With my terry-cloth-clad-arse wobbling in the air, I scooted for freedom, on my year-old hands and knees. Like all good Moms, mine scooped me up and put me back on the blanket but I wasn't having that; not for a second! The world was out there and I was having it!

        If you've locked horns with a toddler you'll know, there will only be one winner. This was the epitome of an unstoppable entity desiring an immovable object. I was getting in that water if it killed me, which it probably would. Eight, even ten times, she retrieved me before she decided to say, "Sod it." 

    I crawled over wave-smoothed gravel and sun-warmed sand, until the water was an inch away. She expected me to stop as soon as it hit my fingers, but she was wrong. I plowed on until the waves lapped my chin, and showed no sign of stopping. She could bear no more and scooped me from a watery death, and carried me back to shore. I howled and cried all the way up the beach. 

        From nowhere, a voice called out to my mother. "Hay, Missus!" She turned to see an ancient man watching the whole debacle from the promenade; he was beside himself with laughter. "Are yea training that yoke for the Olympics, or what?" he said, and howled some more. My Mom was so embarrassed she hightailed it for home. 

        Me? I take it as a complement. I can't say I've changed that much. I still have an unnatural attraction for the sea and have a desire to know what's over the next hill. Honestly, I think this is a gift I got from my Mom. We are both inquisitive creatures.  

        So from both of us; charge toward the horizon, and try the unknown. Life lived at it's fullest will never be regretted.