Today’s story is the strange tale of a midlife crisis, a motorcycle, an electric fence and horse droppings. And I want to emphasize here that this all happened to someone else who is not me at all.

I know, I know, I have somewhat of a reputation for tactical errors. But I refuse to take the blame for everything. This confession belongs to a friend of mine. Let’s call him… no, wait … her! Let’s call HER Karen. And her daughter – no, no, I have a daughter and this time it’s not me. Honest. So let’s say Karen has a son named, um, Chris.

See, I told you it wasn’t me at all.

Anyway, Karen was attending a pig roast on a friend’s farm, a festive gathering with far too many witnesses. I mean, guests. She was sitting by the pond, minding her own business and not bothering a soul. She probably had filched a cookie from the dessert table ahead of time, but I see nothing wrong with that.

Then my daughter … I mean, Chris, Karen’s son … puttered up on a cool minibike. She thought it looked kinda cute and cuddly, a little bike for beginners.

I’ll let “Karen” take the narrative from here:

“He said, ‘Hi, Mom! I bet you’re too old to ride this.’

“I said ‘Cool wheels, dude! Hand it over.’

“You would think I would know better than to accept a bet from my son. No sooner did I say, ‘Woo-Hoo!’ than the bike accelerated from 0 to 30 mph in 3 seconds. Chris forgot to tell me it was a VERY fast bike.

“The brakes were a caliper on the left handle and the throttle was on the right. When one is under duress of clinging desperately to a tiny rocket on the mistaken premise that it would be better to stay aboard than abandon ship, one tends to confuse tiny details, like which side is left and which is right.

“I didn’t even get my feet on the pegs when I drove through the fire pit, narrowly missing the big iron corn cauldron. Thankfully the fire wasn’t lit. Well, not until the heels of my flailing feet played flintlock on the rocks.

“Then I drove through a group of suddenly unoccupied lawn chairs. Did you know that lawn chairs can fly?

“I headed straight for the electric fence surrounding the horse pasture. It is a good thing the current was on. When the wire sliced open my knee, it also cauterized it at the same time.

“Lucky for me there was some fairly fresh horse manure. It bogged down the tires and wiped out the missile on wheels.

“That’s when I heard my son racing behind me yelling, ‘Mom! Let go of the throttle!’

“Now, if he had told me that in the first place I wouldn’t be sitting in a pile of horse droppings, would I?

“When I called the doctor’s office to request a tetanus shot, instead of saying, ‘How about 3 p.m.?’ the receptionist sighed, ‘NOW what did you do?’

“Well, it wasn’t like I was wrestling a steer to prove I still could. Not again, anyway. I do learn eventually.”

Anyway, that’s the way Karen told the story to me. For once, it was someone else’s midlife crisis, not mine.

You do believe me, don’t you?