Wheels Are Better Than Three:

¶ … wheels are better than three: Learning how to ride a bicycle

When the bike moved into the garage, it seemed like a new, innocent occupant of the household, not a scheming rival for anyone's affections. The father had driven the young boy to the toy store one fine afternoon, and taken the young child to the racks of gleaming cycles. "It's about time you learned to ride a two-wheeler," said the father. Normally, when the boy was in a toy store he would beg for something, like a new set of Legos or a new video game. But that trip, he was silent. The boy couldn't understand why it was necessary to learn to ride on two wheels. He liked his Big Wheel. He liked the comforting, cradling plastic seat. He liked feeling low to the ground as he pushed the little vehicle forward. However, as they drove home it began to rain, and for about a week the small dirt bike stood, perched on its kickstand in the garage, harming nobody.

However, the next weekend, the weather was fine and the father said it was time to learn to ride the new vehicle. Balancing on the new bike, the little boy felt as if he was standing on a chair with only one foot. His father's voice was encouraging but it seemed as if he was urging the child to do the impossible: to walk on thin air. Over and over again, the boy pedaled the bike for two feet, and then fell to the ground. "You need confidence!" exclaimed the father. "Keep going!" But every time the boy mounted the bicycle, this unwelcome new intruder in the household would throw him to the ground, like a disobedient pony.

The boy watched his father confidently pedal around the neighborhood on the man's own ten-speed bicycle early every morning before he went for work. The gleaming gears, thin tires, and hand brakes seemed to set an impossible standard of physical accomplishment for the boy. The father rode in tight, spandex shorts and wore special shoes that clipped onto the bike. But the boy could not even manage a simple one-speed. The boy felt as if he was trapped in a world of bicycles that hated him, that everyone else could ride but he could not. 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? He knew where his father kept the tools in the garage. 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.