When I Did It Myself

When I was five, I wanted a two-wheeler bike. It was time to be done with my big tricycle and be a big kid. 

But first there is something you need to know about my parents: they weren't the kind of parents who thought through any aspect of their parenting. Mom was only 21 when I was born and Dad was 27. They liked to do what they wanted to do, and they did love my brother and me and enjoyed doing things with us, but they tended to parent on the convenience plan: if they felt like putting out the effort they did. If it seemed inconvenient, they found a reason not to do it.

So when I wanted a two-wheeler bike, they apparently weren't in the mood to be bothered with it at the time. They were both working, which afforded us luxuries that other kids with a cop or a secretary as a parent didn't, so it wasn't the cost. They just didn't apparently feel like it right then. So instead of the usual thing, where you buy your kid their first two-wheeler and teach them to ride it, they told me they'd buy me one when I was able to ride one. 

Hell, I was five. What they never understood was that I was an extremely bright kid, more than they realized, and logical, too. I wanted my bike, so I was going to learn to ride one.

An older boy on the block had a small two-wheeler and he said he'd leave it out for me to play with all one day. The only other kid my age went to his grandma's after school. My babysitter's oldest was only four and the rest of the kids around were a lot older or a lot younger, so there was not only no one to play with but no one to pay attention to what I did all day (my babysitter had two of her own, one a baby, plus me and my toddler brother — everyone trusted to the safety of a small suburban cul de sac. It was different then.

After I got home from kindergarten, the bike was right where I expected it to be. I checked in with my babysitter then went outside and got on that bike. I rode it back and forth along the sidewalk where we had the longest stretch of ivy: that was what I aimed for when I felt myself falling. I spent the entire afternoon racking up scrapes and cuts and falling in the spider-filled ivy but by the end of the day, I could ride that bike from one end of the cul de sac to the other.

When my parents got home that day and came to get us at the babysitter across the street, I insisted they come outside and see something. Usually I was a biddable, obedient child, but this time I wouldn't quit nagging and begging until they came out. I went to my friend's house and borrowed his bike again and came riding down the middle of the street on his little two-wheeled bike, riding as if I'd been doing so for ages. I braked to an easy stop just in front of my parents and said "Okay, I can ride a two-wheeler now. I want a blue one."

What could they do? While my parents did occasionally break their word to me in a variety of ways, they didn't do so this time (I'm sure my nagging helped). Very soon afterward, I had a blue two-wheeler bike of my own that I rode around and around on that cul de sac with, terrifying my mother once when she saw me riding down the street with my arms stretched out to either side.

A few years later, when my brother turned five, my parents bought him a blue and white two-wheeler with training wheels and my dad spent a whole weekend teaching him to ride it. It was a family affair. 

Part of me still resents the difference in how they handled the bike issue for each of us, but a very large part of me is still so proud that I did what I did to get what I wanted. It was a huge success for me. It was me being strong enough and persistent enough to get what I wanted, even though it hurt sometimes on the way there (I didn't always fall on the side of the ivy!). And I planned for the falls and placed myself so they wouldn't be so bad. Not bad for a biddable, obedient little five-year-old. And quite the lesson for the fifty-one-year-old, not so biddable and obedient self.