Take the Plunge

I got my first bicycle before I knew how to ride. A green Huffy Mainliner. I was in the front yard when my dad drove up on a Saturday with a big box in the trunk. It was meant to be a birthday surprise but it's tough to sneak something by me, then and now. (Paranoia has its perks).

As soon as my dad and the neighbor man got it out of the box, put the handlebars on and fixed the chain I wanted on!

"Can I ride it?" I asked him.

"Hold your horses," he said, and he took out the training wheels. Ididn't want training wheels. Raymond Westmoreland didn't have training wheels. Penny Wilson (a girl!) didn't either. Besides that, they were yellow to match a stripe down the side of the bike. Toddler yellow.

I started riding in circles in the backyard like those brown bears in the circus. This is nothing! Then, after a week my dad decided it was time to take the show on the road. The training wheels came off (his idea, I was liking them). Before he pushed me out onto Havana Street he said, "Get ready to fall."

WHAT?!

He straightened me up, pushed me, ran behind me for a while, and then let go. I fell immediately, hurting my arm trying to catch myself.

"Two things about falling," he said. "Don't catch yourself or you'll break your arm. Second, don't tense up. Relax. Roll with it."

Easier said then done. Most of us try to catch ourselves automatically when we fall, especially in public. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall." I've fallen many times and tried to make it look like I haven't.

Some of us fall like we're drowning. We fight and try to take everybody close down with us.

Nobody learns to walk, ride, or love without falling. Baby birds leave the nest and either fall or fly. But the only way for them to find their wings, which have been there all the time, is to take the plunge.