After dinner, we decided we would take a small stroll around the block on our bikes to take advantage of the weather. Our middle child has been able to ride a bike since last summer. Today, when we got the bikes out, she suddenly had amnesia and forgot ALL the things we taught her last summer, including how to use the super handy dandy braking system.
Shawn, who is supposed to love me the most, has a phrase for me sometimes when I have lost my sheet. (ie please read sheet as another four-letter word which I shan’t write here). He says that I am like a car going down the highway with all its doors open. I am passionate, a wee bit emotional, eclectic, and flighty, so while it’s not super attractive, the analogy can fit. You know, like on days when I hit something in my car, not once, but TWICE.
This analogy is not super fun to think about as it applies to me, but I totally understand as I watched Sloane ride her bike down the street today. She was legit like a car going down the highway with the doors open.
1. She pedals so ferociously that she can not keep her arms and body from swaying to and fro, which causes her to be on the brink of losing control at every moment. She travels from one side of the road to the other, which keeps me running after her to keep her out of the ditch on either side.
2. She also has to keep pedaling to keep her balance. I explain to her that she could stop pedaling and just cruise. But she won’t. She freaks out and just keeps the pedaling nightmare chuggin’ along. Once her legs start moving, she isn’t going to stop them, which means I have to sprint after her at breakneck speed. If I don’t keep up with her, her herky-jerky arms will likely pull the handlebars with force and she’ll end up on the pavement.
3. Stopping is precarious. She doesn’t know how to gingerly use the brakes, to slow herself at a safe rate. She puts full force on the pedal brake like she’s mad at it. The hard brake throws her bike, already moving at a pretty good clip, into a full skid.
It’s super fun.
We had been on the road a full five minutes, and already climbed out of a ditch, when we wanted to take a right and start back home. Despite the nightmare on wheels, I was keeping Sloane calm and trying to teach her the finer points of delicate and ongoing application of the brake. We loudly told Sophie to “Go right!” And then “ GO RIGHT! GO RIGHT! TURN RIGHT!” That was our only possible option, as we knew if we DIDN’T turn right, we would go down a hill that we were sure Sloane couldn’t handle on her best day.
We wanted to avoid the hill at all costs and return home. If the leader of our posse could steer the younger two toward the right turn, we knew we’d be okay. But our eldest didn’t hear our incessant yelling (or so she says) to, “TURN RIGHT!”
So off Sophie went straight down the hill, with Sloane close on her heels. Seeing that they were both not turning right, I started coaching Sloane. She did not heed my words to act with caution and ride the brake. Nope. She pedaled with demonic fury, DOWN a hill, picking up speed all the while. Her arms followed the motion of her furiously working legs and eventually she jackknifed and hit the pavement.
I said a few choice words. Shawn yelled at Sophie. I yelled at Sloane. He yelled at me. Sloane sobbed. Rory wanted to be included in the drama so he refused to ride anymore. I threatened Rory to get him back on the bike. All this, In the middle of the street. We are literally an advertisement for birth control.
I wish the story was over. But it’s not. The tension was high but we amazingly kept it together for the majority of the way home. Rory did end up quitting altogether and made his Dad carry his bike. I had to jog behind Sloane the rest of the way, no matter that I’d already run my two miles for the day.
But here is the icing on the cake. As we pulled on our cul de sac, I was jogging beside her and telling her to control herself and to use the brake every so often and to slow down. Our street has a gradual downhill slope, but our driveway has a sharper drop off. I was right beside her, coaching her, and thinking that if I could get her “whoaed” before our driveway, all would be fine.
In the middle of the gradual decline, she lost her mind and started panicking. She did the opposite of what she was supposed to. She pedaled harder! She outpaced me and all I could do was start sprinting and yell at her, hoping she’d hear me.
The garage was open and she was headed, at full speed, toward my car. I screamed at her to slow down. BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE! I was sprinting and hoping that I could grab her coat in time before she slammed into the hunk of metal and needed reconstructive surgery. She might be hell on wheels, literally, but she is so darn pretty.
Sophie made it home before us. She heard me screaming at Sloane and saw that she had lost control of herself on a speeding bike. She hopped off her bike and stood in front of my car with her arms out like she was going to catch her sister before she broke her face. Bless her heart! My heart swelled with pride for a daughter who cares about her younger sister, but I was also pissed that Sophie made such a colossally bad decision.
I started screaming at Sloane to “BRAKE!” and for Sophie “GET OUT OF THE WAY!”, while wildly waving my arms around. I gained on Sloane but not enough to clutch her off of the crazy train. I pictured going to the ER with two children and explaining this crap show to an ER doctor.
We were within feet of my car and Sloane had not slowed. Sophie dutifully stood there, not heeding my warning, with her back to my car bumper, ready to take the blow that is her wild ass sister. (This is a task that I am sure she will become very familiar with throughout her life.) I braced myself for the collision, heartbroken that my old butt couldn’t sprint fast enough to save both of them.
And then, at the last second, Sloane stomped on the brakes and sent her bike into a hard 3-second skid, stopping herself, and saving us all from a very long, expensive night. As she skidded sideways, her bike tire rolled slowly into Sophie’s left leg, an anticlimactic end to one helluva bike ride and the direct opposite of the collision we all anticipated. Sloane looked up in amazement at having been the sole winner of a game of chicken and being alive to tell the tale. She squealed with delight, “ I DID IT!”
I caught up to her as she skidded to a stop and yanked her off the bike. I was bent over, panting/crying/screaming at them both to “get their butts inside and in bed. NOW!!!” If you ever wonder about all the houses that come up for sale in our neighborhood, now you know why.
Yes, she, in fact, did “do it”, but I needed to go inside immediately to get a drink and change my pants. And up her life insurance.