Learn to Ride

Occasionally, at parties or summer camps or in other groups with people I may or may not know well, someone suggests playing a certain Icebreaker game that involves telling something interesting about yourself that nobody knows. This game was fun the first couple times I played, but after a while one starts running out of new things that no one in the group has heard. I'll start this blog off by suggested you chose another game to play (and not the 'two truths and a lie' game, either, because it's basically the same thing, plus some).

The amazing fact about myself that I ended up telling people on most occasions was that I don't know how to ride a bicycle. Sometimes people thought I was lying, sometimes they didn't care, and sometimes they'd ask to explain why I never learned. I'd usually brush them off with some simple explanation, but it reality, the reason I never learned to ride a bicycle is a bit complex.
My dad finally decided I was old enough to learn when I was six or seven (I don't remember the exact time, but I know it was before we moved into our current house, when I was nine). Unfortunately, soon after he started taking me out with training wheels, the city decided to repave our neighborhood streets (I think they also relayed piping on the main street just outside). There wasn't much room to ride around, so my dad decided to take me to the neighborhood park to practice pedaling over the cut grass.

Pedaling through the park, with Dad holding the seat behind me, wasn't very easy at all. I had gotten to be kind of good on the street before the city ripped it out, but I lost all talent trying to maneuver in the grassy park.

One day, after having dad push me across the park with me pedaling as hard as possible, we stopped for a short break. I looked down as dad was catching his breath and noticed my dad's legs. In my tired, six-or-seven-year-old mind, it seemed like his legs were covered in cuts and blood, and I quickly reasoned that somehow, staying behind me as he pushed, my dad had been hurt by the bike wheels or pedals. When he asked if I was ready to continue, I said I was done for the day and didn't want to go on.

Whenever dad was ready to take me out practicing again, I made up some excuse, reasoning to myself that learning how to ride a bike wasn't worth getting my dad all cut up again. When the street was finally done, I put off our riding lessons, long enough until I finally just didn't care to learn. I'm sure dad was disappointed, and when we moved, the bike was stored in the garage to gather dust until we finally got rid of it.

Sometime after moving and growing older, I learned that my dad has a red birthmark on his leg. I'm not sure what exactly I saw when I was younger, and he was trying to teach me how to ride the bike, but I'm pretty sure it a bright birthmark, which I'd never seen before, and not bloody cuts that I'd somehow inflicted.

Thus, I never learned to ride a bicycle. I've never really had a need to ride a bicycle, so I'm not sure if learning would have somehow benefited me in life. I do know, however, that not learning how to ride a bike has given me access to an interesting story if every anyone needed one from me.