Learning To Ride

Since it was such an unusually nice day today my wife thought it was time that we taught our soon to be eight year old son how to ride a bicycle sans training wheels. He had won a one hundred dollar gift card in a anti-smoking contest last year so at Christmas we bought him a brand new bike and helmet. Off we drove to the park closest to the house where I unloaded the bike and imparted upon him my considerable bike-related wisdom.



 

The problem was that he didn't listen to my instructions because he was very afraid of falling and when he doesn't listen I tend to get frustrated. I managed to calm down enough to let him know that even when I let go for a second or two that I was still going to hold on again and not let him fall. He was slightly better than when we began but is still far away from going solo. He's having difficulty understanding how to keep himself from leaning over.

 

The plan is that if the weather is nice again next weekend we'll go over to Riverside Park where I'll be able to rent a bicycle and let him see the old man in action and perhaps by observing he'll learn something. If I had the money I'd go out and buy a bike for me right now so that we could ride all the time. Of course I haven't ridden one in about twenty years so it's possible that when I write next week it'll be about my new bruises and abrasions. It is possible that it all could come back to me nicely but I'm not counting on it.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

What Good Examples - First Draft

I've been wanting to write this one ever since it happened to me months ago and finally I've started. This will certainly be one of the songs I want to do for my spoken word/music project. I can't wait to get the time to have my music friends collaborate with and turn this into something.......if I'm lucky. At any rate, I've got to try. Why else write it if I can't do it? Tired of waiting for it to happen, time to make it happen.

You came flying over three lanes hell bent on making it into the exit

Unfortunately I had the audacity to already be in said exit lane

Forced to apply your brakes to merge behind me you voiced your displeasure manually

Hand gestures began to fly and naturally I returned them in kind
Not the best presentation of who I am but hey, when in Rome allow yourself to sink to the lowest common denominator
Why not after all, I’m only human you know
At the bottom of the ramp I stopped at the red light waiting to turn
You came flying in beside me in your minivan hurling curses in my direction before you even screeched to a halt
Then the real fun began
According to you I’m overweight
More than that I’m bald, wear glasses and apparently you don’t much like the way I dress
At least that’s what it sounded like to my ears since my windows were still up
I used body language to let you know how feeble your insults were how little sense they made
That’s when I noticed the little pre-teen sitting next to you
I noticed because she took up your battle cry and started to weigh in on your behalf
You have to ask yourself just how much life experience can someone that young have to use in a battle of the witless like this
Turns out not much
Mostly she had some neck rolling and generally just a loud mouth
Not much gravitas added by her lack of years
In a dream I followed them to their stop then proceeded to jump out of my truck and snap kick her side mirror to shreds
Merely to instruct them on how insulting people in your car isn’t so anonymous and that we are responsible for our actions
Maybe next time they’d be more careful with the words they chose
Maybe next time they wouldn’t throw rude gestures with careless abandon
Maybe next time they’d think twice about behaving so poorly
Maybe………………………..
But then I woke up and realized that even if I were able to talk to them calmly and politely they probably wouldn’t be open to listening, to learning, to becoming better people
They wouldn’t be able to see this great, grandiose example I was trying to show them
More likely they’d call the cops and I’d be the one to get in trouble
I might even get shot at, this is Oklahoma after all
The light turned green and as I started my left turn I glanced quickly into my rearview mirror and saw my son looking at me with questions in his eyes
Man, what good examples we had shown

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.