A skinned knee and bruised ego

When I first learned how to ride a bike, I would wobble to the left and then back to the right. Like many kids, I looked like I was going to fall at any moment. My upper body wasn’t strong enough to properly steer and my legs were so short that when I would start to fall, I couldn’t stick them out far enough to protect myself. When I stared to teeter, it wasn’t a question of “if I was going to fall,” but instead “when and how badly I was going to skin my knee.”

Oh, I was a mess.

And what bothered me most was that it looked so easy for my brothers who were taller and stronger. My mom would always try to encourage me, but that just got me even more angry. To make matters worse, I would see other kids out riding with no problems and that just made me even more upset. Where were their bruises?

They rode and went wherever they wanted. Me? I could barely make it a few houses down the street without falling. Being a young perfectionist, I threw my hands up in the air. I wanted no parts of the bike. I put it down and didn’t pick it back up for the rest of the summer.

In some ways that was probably good. When I picked the bike up again later in the fall, I had grown a little more and had a little more strength in my arms and was able to ride without falling. It took awhile until I got better, but it was a start.

There’s a lot of things like bike riding that look simple that are actually quite challenging. I write about a few of those in my piece, A Piece of Cake, on The Heart of the Matter. What tasks would you add to that list?

Related items:

• A piece of cake on The Heart of the Matter
• A Generation X Survivor
• Going home again: My hometown through adult eyes