Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott for January 11, 2023

You didn’t fall flat on your face or your butt. Take the win Zoe.

You’re trying to skate, not fly.

The second panel made me laugh very loudly.

swan?

she’s got the whole ‘flapping her wings’ part down

An ugly duckling start.

If those are rental skates, I can assure you they are dull and therefore will cause you to fall. Don’t get me started on this subject.

A totally natural reaction to being on skates for the first time. After all, she’s on two 1/8" wide pieces of slightly curved steel that gives a very small contact patch to the ice. This contact provides a molecular film of water on which the blade slides.

Throwing her some bread crumbs of encouragement.

More like, as graceful as a turkey thrown out of a helicopter at the Pinedale shopping mall in Cincinnati.

“Oh! They’re plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! The turkeys are hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!”

If things don’t improve for Zoe, maybe she should switch blades.

Yep, that’s about how I looked when I started. :-)

A very mature comment from Zoe.

Wanda, open your eyes!

thats funny (wasnt when it happened to me)

Be kind to swans.

It’s funny for a comic effect, that’s for sure…

But in real life, it’s surprising that a person of Zoe’s age, about 9 or 10, woundn’t have learned to skate by now. In our kids’ case, the physical education part once a week in winter was skating at the local rink, starting in junior kindergarten.

Then in the spring, at the same complex, PE switched to beginner swimming, if the kids didn’t take those lessons earlier. The ones who knew some strokes went to a different group in the same pool.

Been there – done that.

I never put on a pair of ice skates without having just that happen.

You’ll get it, Zoe. Just keep practicing!

A drunk swan?

There’s an old story about a snipe hunter who promised a mother snipe he wouldn’t shoot her children, if he could identify them. “Oh, you’ll know them when you see them, they’re the most beautiful snipe of all!” It’s a sad story…

Well at least you didn’t fall down!