As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Bike.
No self respecting child was ever heard to say they rode a bicycle, because they had bikes. The Hells Angels had motorcycles, because they were pussies, but for me, I had a bike.
I was pondering the psychology of bikes recently, after reading about the torture of bikes on children by parents impoverished in spirit and finances, who bestow on their children bikes that resemble death traps or mind traps of psychological scarring.
Take for example our family of bikes, or non bikes. I think my older sister had a bike, which came down from an Aunt and looked like it could crash into tanks and injure them. I recall it laid in a pile and no one ever touched it. We knew it was a bike, but it was not something a bike was in reality in you rode it.
Then there was my 3rd sister's bike. She got one because she was the old man's favorite. Granted it was a boys bike, someone had driven into a bike display case so it was broken, but it was a bike.
That was about it for bikes, until I girled it up for my sister one birthday and she no longer cared about bikes.
Then came my whining for a bike. I think it was my every waking conversation and I probably called out about bikes in my sleep and when I slept walk, I was probably pedaling my bike.........and then one night at 6 years old, I got a bike.
In adult review, I now know it was a psychological scarring bike, because being a popular girl, it was not of my sex, like my sister's bike. It also was used to the point that in order to be a used bike, it would have had to have paint on it that had not faded about the time sunlight first hit it.
I remember the joy of that bike as it looked great to me. Of course, no one was going to try and help me ride that bike and I was on my own, so I looked it over, got on it, sat there, and it never occured to me to not be trying a bike out on a hill, as what was gravity, tires and motion to me as a 6 year old genius.
I remember somehow the creature sprang to life on it's own and the thrill of moving and then the dawning horror of trees.......and of course, there was one damned box elder tree with a dead man's branch about 2 feet off the ground, and that creature I was on, went right for it, and I can still feel the pain of my near broke leg, and see the bent fender.
That pretty much ended my joy about bikes.
The next announcement after I turned down an offer to help me ride my bike by my brother and sister after chores........like I was going to trust those two after a bike just tried to kill me.........was that I needed training wheels.
This was the prayer to the old man every time I saw him, which was at supper after his day in the bar.....and to shut me up, I got training wheels.
Thing is I soon learned on our dirt drive way full of mud holes, that as I rode along, I had created the first exercise bike in the world, because there I was with my puny little legs just a pedaling away, as my tire skidded just above the dirt and I looked down in disgust.
I am certain some entrepeneur drove by or the CIA was watching me from a U2 spy plane and they saw this, and some smart person said, "I bet I can sell that to fat people", and thus was born the exercise industry.
There is something humbling about having freedom and being stymied by a dirt hole, and having to get off and push your bike over the depression. Seems it felt humiliating.
More humiliation followed as I visited the neighbor boy who had a bike. He announced I had the wrong bike for my sex, and I argued as I had no idea there were girl and boy bikes. His was this humped bar looking thing, which when I rode it, it just .......well it was something I care not to recall as it now reminds me of a giant erection. I wonder if it had something to do with this kid having testicle up inside of him they had to pull down and he later became a sexual degenerate.
Anyway, my great dreams were crushed. I had the wrong bike.
I had to ignore such things, and no one really bothered much with it. I suppose they felt sorry for me in the old man was such a bastard, but I had my bike and I could make it fly.
One of my favorite activities was to ride to another hill, and pedal like hell going down it, and then jam on the brakes and slide sideways. It seemed like I left furrows 20 feet long, but it probably was just 8 feet, but it was great fun........except the lesson about wearing shorts, having a wreck and pulling stones out of my flesh as peroxided bubbled up in the blood.
Then came the time that I decided I needed a flat tire to fix. I have no idea what got into my head sometimes, because one time I decided I needed glasses and faked an eye test, much to the confusion of my school nurse.
Anyway we had a pile of shingles, and shingle nails in them, that I was always walking around in as where else would a kid walk. Come to think of it after the tire incident, I jammed a nail in my foot in that same pile, and it swelled up twice it's size, turned hot red, and I had to wear a boy lace boot as nothing else would fit.
Apparently as I kept talking, Mom was not worried about lock jaw.
So I can still see it, I found a nail in a shingle and I drove my tire up to it, and punctured it, and hiss went the air out, and I had my flat tire.
As I recall in this, the reason I could actually do this, was due to the fact that the tires on this bike were so worn thin, that they were produced when people named Goodyear actually owned the tire company. I think silk shirts had more protection them than my tires which were worn smooth.
It makes me wonder in car tires wear out wiht like 50,000 miles, in how those good rubber tires were worn thin when I got it. Bike must have been owned by Catholics and a dozen of them rode it 49,538 miles before I added my 10,000 on it that first summer.
I announced I had a flat tire. It got fixed, and I do not seem to recall it had any of the drama I had hoped. There were no shoot outs or men looking like Tom Selleck. Just the old man, a rubber flat tire and a patch.
The biggest thrill in it was I had a flat tire.
That pretty much is all I remember about the wrong sex bike the old man got me. I think it is still under a tree on Mom's place under some junk. I suppose I would fix it if I had the money, but right now it just reminds me of the old man and that is probably why I rode bike so much in I was trying to get away from him.
There probably is no moral in this story, as kids have outgrown bikes in the 21st century. Only people I see now riding bikes are Obama and he looks tard, as if we would have had Martian helmets none of the other kids would have ever played with us. Peer pressure actually does have some good points in your not growing up to be queer.
.....and as far as the bikes now, I bet those Obama fag bikes would bend in half in the stresses I used to put my old creature though. Would be a pretzel if a kid crashed one into a tree, where with mine the tree got hurt, I got hurt and the bike is still looking to do more damage to living tissue if some insane child would just pick it up and take let themselves be taken for a ride.
agtG
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