The Birthday Bike from Hell

I was waiting for my birthday as I have never waited since. I was getting a bicycle and would be five and life could not be better. Oh, baby!

My birthday was about a month after Christmas and northern Indiana was brutally cold. It was so cold you could get an ice cream headache without eating ice cream just by walking to school. Fortunately, this was one of those rare birthdays that fell on a Sunday, and I didn't have to go to school. There are few things worse than going to school on your birthday. My birthday was always a letdown following Christmas anyway. But when it's dark and cold and your gift is a collared shirt and you have to go to school, they might as well send you off to the rubber plant clutching your Davy Crockett lunch pail and be honest with you. Your life is over kid, you're screwed. But I was innocent then, and my well-earned cynicism would have to wait until I was five years old plus one minute.

I had dreamt of this bike for months. When my parents said I'd get a bike for my birthday I started walking past the display windows of the Western Auto store by the courthouse and relishing their beautiful Western Flyers. They were like cruisers today, with big strong frames and fat tires and I wanted one that was red. You could fasten a cool white mud flap with raised black pinstriping and a big red reflector to your back fender and you were set for life. I decided not to spring for the optional streamers on the handle bars because that would make me look like a girl. I think streamers were actually standard on girls' bikes back then. This bike, however, was the boy bike of all boy bikes in my small town, and soon it would be mine.

So as Christmas passed and my birthday neared, my yearning grew and grew. I would sneak past Western Auto more often to relish my birthday gift. I was afraid I might see my mom and dad wheeling it out of the store, so I had to be careful and not spoil their attempt to surprise me. I would circle the courthouse, my stupid rubber boots squeaking on the sub-zero snow, to see if Dad's pickup was parked anywhere near. I also checked to see if a red Western Flyer in the store window had a SOLD sign on it but none of them ever did. I even wondered if they had already bought the bike and were storing it at a friend's. I searched for clues to see if people I knew were being evasive, but everyone seemed to keep mum. 

The Holy Feast of Bert's Big Birthday finally arrived. I woke up early, and it was miserably cold and dark. But my heart was warm with the fervent hope that only small children know. When I crept downstairs I thought I'd be swooning over the scent of fresh rubber tire wafting from my brand new bike, but I was wrong.  My parent's faces beamed with pride, however, so I knew I had nothing to fear. "Go out on the front porch," said mom with a sweet, beatific smile. I tore to the front door and threw it open. My heart was pounding, my was mind reeling, and my moment had finally arrived. Oh, baby!

My bare feet stung on the freezing wooden porch but I didn't care. I veered right where I knew it had to stand gleaming in its own self-shining light, and there indeed stood my bike...But it was a plain, used, sun-bleached, baby-shit brown Schwinn with no mud flaps, and with streamers dangling from its handles...My father said it was a good "starter bike" and that he had gotten a great deal on it because it's previous owner was a little boy who had died......

Yeah, laugh, laugh you fancy-ass bastards with your shiny NEW bicycles, and your rational, normal parents, and your pinstriped mud flaps with bright red reflectors. Laugh at 'tardboy riding his dead boy's bike in his stupid rubber boots. With training wheels. At least I wasn't wearing glasses. Yet. It even had a goddamned clown horn on it. Seriously. I can't make this shit up. I'm not that creative. 

I would have cried for my mommy if she hadn't been standing next to me seeming so completely pleased with this foul token of malignancy they'd torn from the grasp of a poor, dead child. Make a wish foundation, my ass. Just let me be raised by normal people, oh please, oh please, oh please...Shit!

In the end, I'll admit, I came to love that bike, but the streamers had to go. A year and a half later my Dad raised the training wheels so slowly over time that he fooled me into riding without them. So I had him take them off one day and I tooled around the block under the maple trees on that brilliant June morning, sticking out my tongue at a mean girl who'd teased me about the training wheels for weeks. It's one of the signature moments of my childhood. Thanks, Dad, for that. You redeemed yourself there and well beyond that many other times.

And as for you lucky ones who got your nice new bikes and ended up not really appreciating them anyway, you can go fuck yourselves and fuck the bikes you rode in on. I'm tired of dodging you wannabes in your cycling tights as you spill out of the bike lane while you're riding six abreast. And if you need any help fucking yourselves, I've got a used clown horn I'll sell you and the owner isn't even dead. Yet.