Chapter Fourteen: As Easy as Riding a Bike​​​

 

     Emily’s primary sixth birthday request had been a bicycle, the first non-tricycle she had ever ridden. Involving a mere trip to the store, that request proved significantly easier than Emily’s second. Tired of “riding like a baby,” Emily asked us to finally remove our original toddler and infant car seats from the rear of our minivan.

 

     When Jack was two years old, he graduated from his infant car seat to one of the toddler variety. With Emily still in a toddler seat and our continued inability to remove either Banzai or Ed, we compromised by adding a second toddler seat to the rear of our minivan, one we could install without glue or fancy knotting techniques.

 

     I nicknamed the third seat Kraken for no particular reason other than it gave me something cool to say when I released Jack from his restraint. Jack quickly grew fond of his new chair, his now full-time car domain.   

 

     While Kraken presented a temporary solution, I knew we would have to deal with the car seat issue eventually. Beyond the now cramped situation in the rear of our minivan, the third seat caused occasional confusion on family outings when passers-by assumed, quite logically, that we had forgotten one of our offspring.

 

     Emily’s birthday request and her recent growth spurt made facing the car seat issue a more immediate concern. With no more room in the rear of our car, we could stash Emily in the trunk (my solution – rejected by both Alma and Emily), or we could finally face the fact that Banzai and Ed would have to go.

 

     After spending a whole Saturday attempting to undo the damage Bob, Mike, and I had done the day Emily was born, I finally gave up and took the van to the dealership. After a bemused look from the repairman, I paid four-hundred-seventy-five dollars to rid myself of the offending seats, three hundred of which went for two replacement seat belts.

 

     Perhaps worried about my children’s safety, the repair shop manager came out to meet me when I picked up our minivan. “I have to ask; were you drinking when you put those seats in?”

 

     “It was the day my daughter was born – I was desperate.”

 

      “I just never knew you could do that to a seat belt.”

 

     With Bonzai and Ed now sitting in our basement, I was relieved until Alma reminded me I might someday have to do the same for Kraken, now our sole remaining car seat.

 

     “We should be okay, “ I told her. “I didn’t use glue on Kraken.”

 

     “Remember the day you put the thing in?  Remember when you went inside to eat lunch?”

 

     “Please, God, don’t tell me that you did.”

 

     My wife only smiled – I was being played.

 

     I calmed my rapidly beating heart. “You laugh, but just pray I never have to put in another one.”

 

     “I know of only one way to really make sure.”

 

     Not liking where the conversation was heading, I quickly changed the subject. “I’m going to show Emily the backseat. She should be thrilled.”

 

     “That’ll last until she realizes she still needs a booster seat.”

 

     With her bike and other gifts, Emily was more than happy with her sixth birthday haul. Emily readily gave Jack her old tricycle, and the two of them set out to learn how to ride.

 

     For Jack, the process was easy. It was a tricycle, and he had watched his sister on many occasions. Once Emily even let him ride on the little metal bar on the back of the trike, a near disaster none of us speak of to this day. Regarding the new bike, I figured Emily would rely on training wheels for the first few months, with a gradual transition to unassisted riding by the end of the Summer.

 

     As usual, I was wrong. My daughter had never met a challenge she couldn’t barrel her way through, and she figured training wheels were for wimps. While watching TV, Emily had observed countless numbers of kids her age riding effortlessly with no problems at all. She assumed if they could do it, so could she.

 

     As the stay-at-home parent, it was my job to smooth my daughter’s transition to cycling independence. Having observed me in other pursuits, Emily gave me one week, allowing a few extra days to account for my incompetence.

 

     Jack listened to all of these discussions with unusually intense interest. At first I thought he was rooting for Emily’s success, but his stake in the bike-training process turned out to be more personal. Jack approached me one morning when his sister was out of the room.

 

     “When Emily hurts herself, can I have her new bike?”

 

     “Emily’s not going to hurt herself.”

 

     “Then why do you want her to use the turning wheels?  Why can’t she just use the big wheels?” 

 

     I had no answer for my son. I just knew TV and reality rarely match.

 

     We started the learning process at a sporting goods store by purchasing a helmet in Emily’s favorite purple. I then began Emily’s actual training with the tried-and-true method, running alongside my daughter, holding the bike before releasing Emily to pedal under her own power. Unfortunately for Emily, that power lasted about twelve feet as she wobbled perilously before falling into one of the bushes lining Mike and Bob’s concrete sidewalk.

 

     After twenty or so attempts, we gave up the traditional method. That surrender disappointed her brother, who thought his sister’s travails were more hilarious than anything he had ever watched on TV. I tried reminding Jack his turn would come, but like most three-year-olds, my son’s outlook was strictly short-term.

 

     Less disappointed was Homer, who decided I was somehow torturing his beloved human sister. Mike seemed to share Homer’s concern, watching from his front room window and wincing every time Emily landed in his cherished boxwoods.

 

     Taking my troops inside, I did what any parent in the twenty-first century would do – I looked up bike training on Google. Forty-five minutes and six articles later, I knew nothing more than I did coming in, and Emily was growing increasingly impatient. I needed to solve this, and I needed to do so quickly.

 

     In one of my frequent bouts of insanity, I took Emily, Jack, and her new bike to the park. On one of the small bike path hills, I prepared Emily for bike training, part two.

 

     “All you need is some momentum. When you go down the hill, gravity will keep you going until I catch you at the bottom.”

 

     “What if I hurt myself?”

 

     “Then Jack will have something to talk about with his friends the next day.” 

 

     She thought I was serious – so did Jack. I shook my head and tried to sound reassuring. “That’s just one of Daddy’s bad jokes. I will catch you at the bottom – I promise.”

 

     The hill extended for maybe twenty-five feet, and the incline wasn’t particularly steep. If Emily veered off the path, I figured I would have no issues grabbing her before she damaged herself or her new bike.

 

     Regarding Emily, I was one hundred percent correct. My daughter hurtled down the hill, her furious peddling resulting in a rate of speed well beyond what I expected. Her velocity kept her going in a reasonably straight line as she flew in my direction. Then, about five feet before Emily reached the bottom, I realized I had never taught my daughter to brake.

 

     Emily’s Huffy bike had wheels that were twenty inches in diameter. Her handlebars extended roughly a foot over her front wheel, making the bike’s overall height about thirty-two inches, conveniently in line with my groin.

The impact was catastrophic, or at least it felt that way at the time. I caught and stopped Emily before doubling over, but male physiology was not to be denied.

 

     Laying on the asphalt bike path, I looked up at the concerned faces of my two children, as well as an older man who witnessed the collision as he walked along the path. After apologizing, Emily asked,

 

     “Why are you lying on the ground?  I didn’t think I hit you that hard.”

In substantial pain, I still managed to groan, “It wasn’t your fault. I’ll explain my injury when you’re older.”  I turned then to Jack, equally concerned and staring without comment.

 

     “Sorry for scaring you bud - You might have reason to understand this a little faster. Hopefully, you two never wanted a younger sibling.” 

 

     The older man, a distinguished-looking gentleman who introduced himself as Gary, gave me a hand in getting up from the path.

 

     “You forgot to teach her how to stop, didn’t you?  I made the same mistake with my daughter. It hurt like hell for a week.”

 

     “Thanks, that helps a lot.”

 

     “Does it really?”

 

     “Not at all, Gary. But if you can help me stand without vomiting, I think we’ll call it even.”

 

     Thankfully, I managed to stand and stagger my way back along what felt like a two-mile walk back to our minivan. Along the way, we encountered six or seven other walkers who also witnessed my misfortune. Most made little attempt to hide their amusement.

 

     Thus shamed, I still managed to lift the bike into the back of our van and drive the kids home. After regaining my range of motion and assuring a worried Emily she would still learn to ride, I sat down to reconsider my options. The hill method had been far too ambitious, and I would be lucky if Alma, due home in just thirty minutes, didn’t push me down a hill instead.

 

     As I predicted, she wasn’t pleased. “With a half day’s practice, you thought sending our daughter down a hill was a good idea?  Maybe later, you can have her practice on our second-floor balcony. Just what exactly were you thinking?”

 

     “Before I get to that, maybe the balcony’s not such a bad idea – it worked for Evil Knievel. Regarding the hill, it wasn’t that steep, and it was the way my father taught me how to ride.”

 

     “Didn’t you tell me your father also tossed you in the deep end of the pool to learn how to swim?”

 

     “Point taken, but Emily managed to ride the entire way without falling or heading into the trees.”

 

     “At the cost of an injury that almost left you unable to father more children.”

 

     “I figured after you heard this, that wouldn’t be an issue.”

 

     “Luckily for you, I have a short memory.”

 

     Alma’s short memory and my aching groin aside, I was still left with a daughter anxious to ride and no realistic plan to reach her goal. That evening I again watched YouTube and read all the articles I could find. None of them agreed on a solution.

 

     I decided to go back to the beginning, this time taking a more scientific approach. If nothing else, I hoped that would be enough to convince Emily I had some vague idea of what I was doing.

 

     The next day we returned to the sidewalk in front of our home. Along with Jack, we took my IPad, some colored chalk, and a tape measure. With Jack holding one end of the measure, I marked the sidewalk in front of our house as well as Mike and Bob’s in ten-foot increments, having obtained Mike’s permission via a phone call the evening before.  

 

     That job done, I showed Emily her new training spreadsheet. With the next fourteen days entered as columns, we would record Emily’s progress on a separate row after each attempt. With Emily still dubious, I then revealed my trump card - the enormous bag of Skittles I had bought the evening before. We agreed that Emily would get one skittle for every successful ten-foot ride, two for every twenty feet, and so on.

 

     A goal-driven child if there ever was one, Emily loved my plan. To avoid a civil war, I gave Jack an equal Skittles ration for “encouraging his sister.”  While his cheering included muffled laughter, I pretended not to notice.

 

     For once, my plan worked as intended. While Mike and Bob’s hedges took a beating on day one, the boxwoods were only hit twice on day two and not at all from day three onward. As for me, I continued charting Emily’s progress between two more trips to the store to buy additional Skittles. Even Jack started genuinely rooting for his sister.

Whether due to sibling pride or his candy addiction, I didn’t really care.

​​

     When we started, I had told Emily she should not ride further than the end of our block, about twenty houses past our two-story colonial. I figured it would take her at least three weeks to get that far, but I should have known better - Emily reached our street’s end in five days. It was a joyous achievement despite my near cardiac arrest.

It happened in slow motion. While Emily was riding away from me, I imagined her ear-to-ear smile, a grin I saw for real when my daughter turned around to wave.

 

     Sadly apathetic towards my daughter’s good mood, Emily's bike took that opportunity to immediately veer off course. Emily’s attempt to correct her direction came too late, and her bike crashed into the brick fence Mrs. Turner had erected to protect her rosebushes.

 

     Roughly the size of my daughter’s two-wheeler, the fence and Newtonian physics brought the bike to an abrupt halt. Unfortunately for Emily, those same forces allowed her to be catapulted over the concrete wall away from my line of sight.

     

     I never ran faster in my life, and Jack, no longer laughing, was only a few seconds behind. Expecting to hear crying, I just hoped I would hear something.

 

     As it happened, I did hear a noise. Unless Emily’s bike had developed a sense of humor, my daughter was somehow laughing. Jumping over the fence, I found Emily sitting upright, ignoring the rosebush thorns wrapped around her torso.

 

     “Did you see me, Daddy?  Did you see me?  I did it! I went the entire way.”

 

     “Yes, you did, sweetheart, and Daddy’s very proud. Now let’s get you out of here before those thorns start to hurt.”

 

     Picking Emily up gingerly, I placed her on the sidewalk-side of Mrs. Turner’s fence. Picking up her bike, she again turned to face me.

 

     “Are you really proud of me, Daddy?”

 

     “I most certainly am.”

 

     “Then why are you crying?”

 

     I hadn’t even realized I was. “It might have something to do with when you flew over that fence, sweetheart. Don’t worry – it’s just something daddies do.”