Lessons

Written by: Cyle Talley

Six years old: You received the fire engine red bicycle for your birthday three months ago, but the real gift has been freedom. You are no longer limited to playing Ninja Turtles in the backyard. Now, you can strap your plastic sword to your back and go as far as Mr. Meyer’s house at the edge of the block.

At least a million times a day, you ride down to Mr. Meyer’s house, go up the slope of his driveway, and then bomb down his snaking walkway that leads back to the street. At the end of the walkway, you slam on the pedal brake and throw what little weight you have to the side so that you can “skid out”. You’re evading the Shredder. You’re peeling out to save April O’Neill. You’re in a movie. You’re a superhero. You’re a big kid now. 

When you’re an adult, your mom will tell you that when she realized it was you leaving the black streaks on the poor old man’s walkway, she went down and apologized profusely, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She will tell you that Mr. Meyer said watching you reminded him of his first bicycle and how when he was a boy, he wore ruts through a neighbor’s driveway. You pass along the kindness that matters, he said.

Fifteen years old: You have a job at the pizza place. Tired of getting rides from your tyrannical older stepsister who extorts you for gas money, you go to the thrift store and fall deeply in love with an old maroon 15 speed Schwinn with suicide shifters and leather tape on the drop bars. You buy it for $25.

Your buddies who ride BMX bikes  rip you for your grandpa bike, until you leave them in the dust on the way to baseball practice. 

One day, you hop on the Schwinn and realize that it has a flat. You find a nail from the construction zone you’d ridden through the night before. Fuck. You get a ride from your father to work and when he drops you off, you ask if he’ll pick up a tube and tire for you. You gonna pay me back? Your father says. You get a sinking feeling. You’d assumed he’d just take care of it. He sees this on your face. There’s what you pay for it, and there’s how much you pay to take care of it. he says.

Thirty-three years old: You are in Amsterdam after a torrid six weeks teaching at Oxford. You have rented a hulking beast of an omafiet (literally: “grandma bike”) from your hostel. You have successfully navigated the ferry that crosses the River IJ, found the red fietspad (“bike path”), and are headed to the Rijksmuseum. You pinch yourself for the thousandth time that summer. Yes, you really did get to teach at Oxford. Yes, you really are on a bicycle in Amsterdam.

You come to an intersection and see a car turning in your direction. As an American, you instinctively fear the car because you know that the car does not give a shit about you. You stop. You are hit. Not by the car, but by a Dutch woman in thick rimmed black eyeglasses. She is angry. She curses at you in Dutch. You pick yourself and your omafiet off of the ground and say, I’m so sorry, miss. I— and the woman realizes that you are not from here. She sighs dismissively and says, If you are not looking, can you really see? And she rides off. ←→