 |
| The Vause Family, minus 1 (My oldest brother Milton was a PRO at getting out of these things...) circa ???? |
Remember the first time you learned how to ride your bike without the training wheels? That memory just flashed in my head today. We lived closed to the bottom of a street that was a pretty decent sized hill, so as an older kid riding down it was a lot of fun. But it was also a dead end with flowing traffic at the "T" at the bottom of the hill. This, of course, let to a lot of exciting afternoons when the chain suddenly came of the those old bikes with "back pedal" brakes.
I have a vivid memory of my dad teaching me how to ride without the training wheels. I remember the bike - it was pink and white with an enormous, cushy, pink seat. Streamers burst forth from the end of the handle bars, whipping in the wind like loose hair when you rode fast. Those same streamers eventually got pulled out of course, and the open end of those handle bars became perfect little homes for spiders, which eventually led to my jumping of the bike mid-ride upon discovery, sending it crashing to the ground to be scarred by the asphalt. You know my love for spiders. The pedals were not smooth, but had those jagged-ragged edges that gripped into the soles of your shoes and ripped the skin off the back of your leg when you're weren't paying attention. I don't think any toy we played with when we were younger would be deemed "safe" enough for the soft-skinned children of today...
But we digress. Riding your bike was always such a freeing activity. When we were small, we were only allowed to ride laps around the driveway. It seemed so big at the time, but now that I think about it you could barely fit two cars in it, and at the end of the driveway was a short but steep hill into the back yard. I remember an unintentional kamikaze run with an Evil Knievel 3-wheeler down that hill that ended in poison ivy and tragedy. But that story is for another day. Back to these training wheels - I would ride my laps around the driveway with my sister (4 years younger), and finally realized one day that I was not really using the training wheels anymore. In fact, I had stopped using the right one weeks before when it broke off, and was getting pretty adept at leaning to one side and sort-a-kind-a riding on the left one. But it was time. My dad took out a screwdriver from the ugly, smelly, yellow tool box in the trunk of his car and set the remaining training wheel free. I now remind you that we lived on a BIG HILL, and no one can learn to ride well-balanced while struggling to climb a hill. Guess who was going to be pushed down the hill? Of course, I had not figured this out yet but the moment was near.
I got on the bike, all excited and a-quiver. I remember my dad kept yelling, "Don't look back - look straight ahead!" Why? This didn't compute at first, but we all KNOW what was coming. We started off slowly down the remainder of the hill, and I could feel my dad's hands on the back of my bike. Yeah baby, we're flying now! I felt the wind in my face, and my heart raced. I was doing it! But even though I could feel the pressure of his hands on the bike, I still had to keep looking back to make sure he was still there.
"Don't look back!"
And then the pressure was gone. Oh my God - is he insane??? I can't ride this bike by myself! But I could. It was all me. I actually remember making a choice in my mind at the time - I could freak out knowing I wasn't being helped, look back and fall and scrape myself to bits, and then not accept responsibility for the fall because I hadn't a clue what I was doing but instead blame the fall on my father for not holding on. That is always choice number one for a kid. Or I could concentrate, pedal faster (because faster is always better on a bike) and keep riding down the hill. Usually when it boils down to a choice between pain or no pain - whether you're a kid or adult - we choice the no pain route. And that's what I did. At least, I think I did, because I really have no recollection of the rest of the ride. Maybe I crashed into a parked car and knocked myself out - who knows? But I do know that I learned to ride my bike that day, and I declared that It Was Good.
Life can be quite a bit like that. We are more than willing to try new things when we know that The Parent is going to hold on to the back of The Bike while we ride. I'll volunteer for that new project at work because I know my Mentor on the Job will be there to help me in the end, and if necessary, keep me from making an ass of myself. I'll work for that Parent Company with all the infrastructure and money to keep my little pet project afloat, because I know if I get into trouble, I can ask for additional employees, barter for more money at budget time, or simply supply the necessary reports to prove to Parent Boss that The Cool New Bike Idea was good, but failed because the market said it was going to fail.
But if you really want to fly in life, if you really want to race down that hill, streamers flying, you have to be willing to do it without those hands on the back of that enormous, cushy, pink seat. And sometimes there's not even anyone there to tell you "Don't look back!" You have to take the chance that the chain is going to pop right off that bike frame and hope that you've got enough rubber on the bottom of your shoes to do a Barney Rubble stop before you either ride into traffic or careen down that steep embankment into the Doyle & McDonnell Inc building at the end of the street. Neither ending would be positive, mind you, but don't you remember as a kid thinking to yourself, "There's no way I'm going to crash, and even if I do it's going to be wicked sweet"? When did we become such wusses and start going down hills riding the brakes???
I'll tell you when - when scrapes and bruises became permanent scars with permanent memories burned into our brains. Sometimes the memory of the pain is so much more worse than the event itself, and we let that memory take over and change the person we know ourselves to be. Evil Knievel becomes The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, and the only time we take a chance down a hill is when we're playing with our Wii.
Bruises and scars tell stories - we all have them. Some of the stories are good, some are bad, but they always tell stories of a life that was lived. The good thing is that all scars heal, if we tend to them properly. IF WE TEND TO THEM PROPERLY. This means different things for different people, of course, and sometimes the hard part is figuring out what the proper treatment is. I've got a few big ones myself, and it's time to stop pulling the scabs off (yes, I was one of THOSE kids). It's time to heal. I miss that girl who rode like a crazy person down hills. I'm gonna go find her.
Because tomorrow, I'm buying streamers.
But we digress. Riding your bike was always such a freeing activity. When we were small, we were only allowed to ride laps around the driveway. It seemed so big at the time, but now that I think about it you could barely fit two cars in it, and at the end of the driveway was a short but steep hill into the back yard. I remember an unintentional kamikaze run with an Evil Knievel 3-wheeler down that hill that ended in poison ivy and tragedy. But that story is for another day. Back to these training wheels - I would ride my laps around the driveway with my sister (4 years younger), and finally realized one day that I was not really using the training wheels anymore. In fact, I had stopped using the right one weeks before when it broke off, and was getting pretty adept at leaning to one side and sort-a-kind-a riding on the left one. But it was time. My dad took out a screwdriver from the ugly, smelly, yellow tool box in the trunk of his car and set the remaining training wheel free. I now remind you that we lived on a BIG HILL, and no one can learn to ride well-balanced while struggling to climb a hill. Guess who was going to be pushed down the hill? Of course, I had not figured this out yet but the moment was near.
I got on the bike, all excited and a-quiver. I remember my dad kept yelling, "Don't look back - look straight ahead!" Why? This didn't compute at first, but we all KNOW what was coming. We started off slowly down the remainder of the hill, and I could feel my dad's hands on the back of my bike. Yeah baby, we're flying now! I felt the wind in my face, and my heart raced. I was doing it! But even though I could feel the pressure of his hands on the bike, I still had to keep looking back to make sure he was still there.
"Don't look back!"
And then the pressure was gone. Oh my God - is he insane??? I can't ride this bike by myself! But I could. It was all me. I actually remember making a choice in my mind at the time - I could freak out knowing I wasn't being helped, look back and fall and scrape myself to bits, and then not accept responsibility for the fall because I hadn't a clue what I was doing but instead blame the fall on my father for not holding on. That is always choice number one for a kid. Or I could concentrate, pedal faster (because faster is always better on a bike) and keep riding down the hill. Usually when it boils down to a choice between pain or no pain - whether you're a kid or adult - we choice the no pain route. And that's what I did. At least, I think I did, because I really have no recollection of the rest of the ride. Maybe I crashed into a parked car and knocked myself out - who knows? But I do know that I learned to ride my bike that day, and I declared that It Was Good.
Life can be quite a bit like that. We are more than willing to try new things when we know that The Parent is going to hold on to the back of The Bike while we ride. I'll volunteer for that new project at work because I know my Mentor on the Job will be there to help me in the end, and if necessary, keep me from making an ass of myself. I'll work for that Parent Company with all the infrastructure and money to keep my little pet project afloat, because I know if I get into trouble, I can ask for additional employees, barter for more money at budget time, or simply supply the necessary reports to prove to Parent Boss that The Cool New Bike Idea was good, but failed because the market said it was going to fail.
But if you really want to fly in life, if you really want to race down that hill, streamers flying, you have to be willing to do it without those hands on the back of that enormous, cushy, pink seat. And sometimes there's not even anyone there to tell you "Don't look back!" You have to take the chance that the chain is going to pop right off that bike frame and hope that you've got enough rubber on the bottom of your shoes to do a Barney Rubble stop before you either ride into traffic or careen down that steep embankment into the Doyle & McDonnell Inc building at the end of the street. Neither ending would be positive, mind you, but don't you remember as a kid thinking to yourself, "There's no way I'm going to crash, and even if I do it's going to be wicked sweet"? When did we become such wusses and start going down hills riding the brakes???
I'll tell you when - when scrapes and bruises became permanent scars with permanent memories burned into our brains. Sometimes the memory of the pain is so much more worse than the event itself, and we let that memory take over and change the person we know ourselves to be. Evil Knievel becomes The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, and the only time we take a chance down a hill is when we're playing with our Wii.
Bruises and scars tell stories - we all have them. Some of the stories are good, some are bad, but they always tell stories of a life that was lived. The good thing is that all scars heal, if we tend to them properly. IF WE TEND TO THEM PROPERLY. This means different things for different people, of course, and sometimes the hard part is figuring out what the proper treatment is. I've got a few big ones myself, and it's time to stop pulling the scabs off (yes, I was one of THOSE kids). It's time to heal. I miss that girl who rode like a crazy person down hills. I'm gonna go find her.
Because tomorrow, I'm buying streamers.
No comments:
Post a Comment