Carol, a good friend and colleague, has a beautiful young daughter who is in the process of learning to ride a bike. Talking to Carol was a real eye opener – it seems for some things, times have changed!
Safety is a big concern for today’s parent. Their children start riding with training wheels and never with-out a safety helmet. Kids are now enrolled in special bike classes, designed to teach them how to ride, road safety and Quantum Physics.
In my day - in small town West Texas - it was Dog-eat-Dog. Survival of the Fittest.
The most you could expect from your parents was an abrupt push to get you started – after which they usually ran back into the house to finish watching their TV show.
In theory this doesn’t sound so bad, but learning to ride a bike becomes more problematic when you realize that you have no idea how to stop the damn thing. You ride and ride, up and down the street, peddling for dear life, and eventually you have no option but to crash into something.
It doesn’t take long to recognize that curbs are bad things, they act like sling shots – and large rose bushes are to be avoided at all cost. Not to mention that ‘in my day’ we did this without safety gear - on a hand-me-down bike that was two sizes too high.
Ahhh…the good old days.
Safety is a big concern for today’s parent. Their children start riding with training wheels and never with-out a safety helmet. Kids are now enrolled in special bike classes, designed to teach them how to ride, road safety and Quantum Physics.
In my day - in small town West Texas - it was Dog-eat-Dog. Survival of the Fittest.
The most you could expect from your parents was an abrupt push to get you started – after which they usually ran back into the house to finish watching their TV show.
In theory this doesn’t sound so bad, but learning to ride a bike becomes more problematic when you realize that you have no idea how to stop the damn thing. You ride and ride, up and down the street, peddling for dear life, and eventually you have no option but to crash into something.
It doesn’t take long to recognize that curbs are bad things, they act like sling shots – and large rose bushes are to be avoided at all cost. Not to mention that ‘in my day’ we did this without safety gear - on a hand-me-down bike that was two sizes too high.
Ahhh…the good old days.
4 comments:
And let's not forget double riding - either sidesaddle across the bar of the boy's bike, on the seat gripping the waist of the poor rider who had to pedal standing up, or propped across the handle bars making sure our bare feet didn't get caught in the spokes. I'll show you my scars if you show me yours.
I learned to ride on my Dad's black boy's bike. I just stuck my leg under the bar and rode kinda stuck out to the side!!
I think today's kids are overprotected and babied to the point that it is harmful. I vote for the methods of the old days!
P.S. On second thought, I once witnessed a little girl ride her bike off the sidewalk into the TOP of a tree growing in a sunken yard about 10 feet below the road... she was just kind of stuck there, mid-air... screaming. It was amusingly awful.
Good post.
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