He seethed with jealousy when he saw his classmates sail around the sidewalks 'no hands,' and even felt a pang of shame when he saw little girls riding their pink bikes to school, without training wheels. When his father and he passed a boy, only a little older than himself, riding the same type of simple blue dirt bike the father had purchased for his son, the child felt as if he had been stabbed through the heart. Clearly, he lacked some critical, innate sense of balance, some physical intelligence that others seemed to possess. Before, he had though the bicycle bought for him was cursed. Confronted with the evidence that others could ride upon it, the boy understood he had been born under an unlucky bicycle star. "I'm a retard," he told himself.
One night, while he was tucked under the covers in bed, the boy came to a solution: if he could not learn how to ride the bike and intuit the mysterious ability to do so, the bike would have to go. Why should the bike be allowed to mock him, like a younger, more favored child, when he had been there first?...
A hammer and some screws should do.
But the bike was strong and tough, or the little boy's fists were weak. He barely dented the bicycle. He thought about deflating the tires and removing the chain, but he knew that could be easily fixed with his father's bicycle repair kit, so he went back to bed.
"This is really getting you down," said his father, during their next session together. The boy said nothing, and merely stared, abashed at the cracks in the driveway.
"I want you to learn so badly because I never learned to ride a bike as a kid. I only learned to ride as an adult."
"Really?" said the boy.
"Yeah. Grandma and Grandpop were very overprotective. I love cycling so much, I wanted to give you the gift of riding a bicycle as soon as possible."
The boy's heart swelled. He knew now, no matter what might happen, he would never be replaced. The bike was something to be conquered, not something his father loved more than himself.
