Bike Lesson

(This is yet another installment in what seems to be a continuing series of Bad Dad stories.)

I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was six or seven. Dad taught me. This was his process.

1. Let child use training wheels for a week.  
2. Take child to the sidewalk at the top of a hill.
3. Take off training wheels. 
4. Run alongside child while holding on to her bike.
5. Let go of bike.
6. Shout encouragement as child bikes.
7. Watch in horror as child does not stop as she nears elderly couple walking slowly in her direct path.
8. Realize you have not taught child to use brakes, which on her bike requires pedaling backward, which is not intuitive and bad design.
9. LOOK AWAY as child stops the bike by riding her front wheel directly between the legs of the elderly gentleman who, thankfully, was facing away.

The elderly man claimed he was fine, only he did notice I was looking at Dad and Dad was still pointedly not looking at me. 

I did get a lesson in braking later that week.

Comments

[KC]

That is... uh... yeah. I think braking was one of the first concepts, although in part that was because it was a "you pedal forward to go forward and backwards to go backwards" thing.

Also we went to an empty elementary school's fenced-in blacktop for biking.

(I do not remember if I ever had training wheels, though. I never got especially confident at biking, though, and therefore never got especially good at it, for behold, if you get nervous or go slow, you wobble...)

That said, 1. no one died, and 2. you got a hilarious story out of it, so there is that. (But also YIKES and if there had been a car or something and YIKES.)

[theQueen]

KC - Well, entirely possible the old man could have died from internal injuries later.

[KC]

Ehhh probably not from (approximate) tailbone contact? If you'd headbutted his stomach, maybe, but still likely not. If he was able to walk away from a bike-to-backside incident, he was probably not gonna die from it.

Unless, I guess, he later had a heart attack while thinking about it or something, but that also seems unlikely...

Anyway! I am very glad you lived through your childhood and onwards! Keep it up! :-) (... not the running into people on bicycles part, the living part...)

[theQueen]

KC - I think everyone has some near-death story. Gary just regaled me with the time he "was in a shoot-out in a parking garage." (There is truly no more to the story than that. He was an innoc ent bystander and the police told him to freeze and guns sound like fireworks.)

[KC]

Well, yeah, a couple of near-death stories, but I think you have a statistically-high number of non-car-accident Adults Weren't Using Their Brains ones...

[theQueen]

KC - I bet I'm average, but my willingness to roll over on dead fathers is above average.