I'm Local Color! I'm Local Color!

Really, this isn't about what an oddball I am. I'm a sucker for folk art, the weird, recumbent bicycles, and Daisy is kind of all three with a little something extra thrown in.

But nope, this is about generosity. The kind of generosity that's hard to process.

And it's about Mo's effect on people. I have two beautiful daughters, but Mo has an uncanny knack for inspiring people to give her things. Uncanny because people say 'hi' to her and she normally shines them on, at most waving but generally acting as if they weren't there. For someone who almost always fails to carry her half of any conversation, she has shitloads of friends.



Often these are people I've never met, but who know her from school. Other times, they are strangers even to her, like the guy at the marble show who insisted on giving her a handmade marble he'd done.

Em never inspires anyone to give her anything, as far as I can tell, except inappropriate daydreaming gazes, and those are generally from boys her age.

Anyway, one of the side effects of Mo's autism, she doesn't really get traffic safety. As in this is a 13 year old I have to cross the street with explaining like she was ten years younger. And I still don't think she gets it. She understands a lot of what's said, more than her dialog contributions would suggest, but she really doesn't get that cars are dangerous. They're nice, they take you places, what could go wrong?



So teaching her to ride a bicycle would be like having her fitted for a coffin. But when I spotted Daisy, this side-by-side recumbent tandem trike at the city wide garage sale last year, I thought, She could ride stoker, though!

I don't even know why I asked what the guy was asking for Daisy, my big expenditure that day was a $20 Kitchen Aid mixer made before 1962. I was told he'd just sold the thing for $200, which was more than I had but about what the seats might be worth at salvage.

So this year when I stumbled on Daisy (a name the guy who bought it last year's wife gave this contraption), I talked to Pastor Kurt, it's owner and we exchanged numbers. He'd talked about how his wife had suggested he put a $500 price tag on it and see what happened.

Then he called me Sunday morning and told me he'd sell Daisy to me for what he paid, $200. Which is more than fair, priced to move even, but I literally couldn't do it. I couldn't even fake it like I might have a year ago.

Eight hours later, he calls to tell me that he and his wife had been 'praying about it,' which is Devout Christian for 'thinking about it,' and they'd like me to have Daisy.

Which is to say, I think, they'd like Mo to have Daisy. Turns out Pastor Kurt's wife worked with Mo in elementary school. And I've mentioned how Mo just inspires people to give things to her, right?

So I walked over to Pastor Kurt's this evening and took possession of this rolling folk art, this impossible trike. I got comments, compliments, knowing glances, and a hell of a cardio workout just getting this sucker home and we're talking less than a mile. Can't wait to whip the tarp off Daisy and take the girls on a pedal powered adventure tomorrow evening.