The day before this issue went to press I was sitting in our small St. Francisville office wondering what to write about when my son’s friend, Jacob, rushed in with wide, frightened eyes and shouted, “Come quick! Charles has crashed his bike into a telephone pole!”
Every parent dreads this moment, but it’s especially harrowing for the father who, juggling a deadline and the arrival of kids’ summer vacation, chooses to occupy his eleven-year-old son by sticking a bike in the car, bringing him into town, and just leaving him to it—especially when the father does this against his wife’s better judgment. I rushed to the scene and discovered Charles hobbling along Ferdinand Street, wheeling a somewhat mangled bike and looking shaken but otherwise none the worse for wear. Apparently he, Jacob, and another friend had been riding down the narrow sidewalk when a busload of familiar schoolchildren came trundling by, creating an irresistible opportunity for a race. Whether or not there was taunting involved was not divulged, but for whatever reason, Charles departed the pavement and found himself wrapped ignominiously around said utility pole, the laughter of a retreating busful of kids burning his ears with shame.
At least he was wearing a helmet. I was just relieved to find him only a little winded from having received a handlebar to the solar plexus. Not twenty minutes beforehand, he had received quite a detailed lecture from me about riding sensibly on the street, so his immediate concern was that I would be mad at him for coming undone. In light of the lecture, and since this took place on the very first day of Charles’ summer vacation, I was a bit dismayed because the historic district of St. Francisville is small and lightly trafficked and should therefore be perfectly navigable by a boy on a bicycle.
Several of Charles’ friends live within easy cycling distance of the town center, whereas we live twenty miles away, in the northern part of the parish, separated from any social contact by a half-hour commute. So while he has grown up with plenty of room to ride, he’s never really had anyplace to ride to. Cycling is great, but when you can use your bike to get someplace you want or need to go—to work, to the grocery store, to a restaurant or a friend’s house—it becomes more rewarding. For the modern child who has depended on adults to ferry him everywhere, the sudden freedom is cathartic; and many a lifelong cyclist was forged around the beginning of adolescence, when a bike becomes a vehicle for expanding one’s personal universe. So it seemed reasonable to assume that on the days when dad’s work commitments required it, Charles might relish being let loose in town astride the contraption that has given generations of children their first taste of freedom. Perhaps we should try a skateboard.
But what a classic start to a summer vacation! When you’re a kid, it’s not really summer until you’ve fallen off your bike. Or thrown yourself off on purpose. When I was growing up I spent a lot of time at the beach. One summer, a group of us kids got hold of an old bike and about a hundred feet of rope and took it down to a long pier that stuck out into deep water. We took turns riding off the end of the pier as fast as we could, wrenching the bike and ourselves into twists, somersaults, and mid-air bailouts in a quest to pull off the unlikeliest, most dangerous-looking stunt. Certainly I didn’t win, but nor do I remember considering the very real possibility of, say, hitting the pier on the way down or getting dragged to the bottom tangled in a rope attached to a rusty BMX. Nor do I remember my parents raising an eyebrow about it. Anyway, the minor bruises and abrasions that resulted from this colossally stupid activity were treated as badges of honor, catalogued alongside the sunburn, poison ivy rash, stubbed toes, and bug bites that are the surface evidence of endless summer. Still, before unleashing Charles upon public thoroughfares again, perhaps we will have a little lesson in the finer points of watching where you’re going. That’s a good skill to have, whatever age you are.
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