When I was young -- 3 or 4 -- and still living in Michigan, I had a T-shirt with a spangle of glittery writing across the chest.

"Champion Knee Scraper," it said.

Nothing could have been more true.

I fell. I jumped. I dove. I twisted and contorted my limbs into all manner of trouble, scraping my knees and legs until they scabbed over and became knobby. By the time our family moved to California, I had only become more proficient at what can probably best be described as clumsy daring -- feats of outrageous stupidity and inelegance.

I remember a boring afternoon when I went to meet my older brother after school. I knew what route he took home, and so I waited until he rounded a corner and then blasted down the sidewalk. Only later did I see the tiny lip where two square slabs of sidewalk met each other, one going under and pushing the other upward -- plate tectonics on the smallest scale. My foot hit the lip and I went flying, scraping the length of my body across the concrete.

My family likes to retell this story, because I spent the next few minutes crying, "I should have walked! I should have walked!"

But now, as a parent of a 4-year-old, I look back on that sentiment and think, "Well sure, maybe, but what fun would that be?"

We just returned from a week-long trip the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan, a fantasy land of outdoor adventure. For an entire week, I watched as Emmeline biked and swam and jumped and tripped and hiked and ran screaming through narrow paths and over wobbly trail planks. She even kneeboarded behind a slow-moving boat, panicking one day when it sucked her under and laughing the next day when she found the courage to try again.

I was getting her dressed for bed one evening, kneeling in front of her and pulling a pair of pajama shorts gingerly over her knees. She grabbed my head for balance.

"Don't touch the knees," she pleaded, as I stretched the fabric to avoid any contact with her skin. One of her shins sported a waffling of road rash. Another had a gash. Her knees were scraped and beginning to scab over. She fell at one point and tore a slice out of her triceps. Her forehead was slightly purple above an eyebrow. There was a faint pink third eye in the middle. It was like we took her on vacation to American Gladiator school.

"What'd you do to yourself?" I laughed.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm having fun, daddy."

I knew the feeling exactly.