Once you get it you never forget. Learning in the first place, though, was one of those things as a kid I just couldn’t seem to master. The four-wheels afforded by stabilisers made sense- no leap of faith was required to keep the balance. And unless you hammered it over some rocky terrain (the veritable rally-course that was the road in the front of my house) there wasn’t any real danger of a grazed knee or anything like that.
When it was decided that the time had come, to learn to do it, sans-stabilisers, it was much the same as trying to separate me from my arm-bands; a lot of floundering and mystified, wide-eyed incredulousness as how it was possible to swim or ride (or even survive) without the aid of these wonderful assistants!
This floundering and just-say-no-ing to letting go and peddling off into the sunset went on for some time so my Dad hatched a plan to move things along a little bit faster. He crafted an invention. It consisted of one wooden broom stick and several elastic bungees (you know those fluro- stripey things with hooks that have a tendency to ping off whatever their holding together and whack you near to the eye) that strapped the broom to the back of the bike. He would then hold on to the broom while I peddled, so if I did loose my balance he could hopefully right the bike and all would be hunky dory until I got the hang of it. It was a slow and gruelling process though. I found it hard not to look back and check if he was holding on still, which made balancing harder. I imagine once I had got a bit faster he looked a bit like one of those poodles that people try and multi-task taking for their walk and going for a bike ride and the dog has to half-scamper, half-drag themselves behind the bike. Except my Dad is 6 foot 7, so less poodle, more multi-tasking with your pet giraffe.
Anyway, I was wondering do you have any stories about being a slow-learner in anything as a kiddie that might make me feel better about mine? I have to say though, I now feel a bit empowered: This is one of those stories that my family like to share with boyfriends and the like in an attempt to embarrass me, and sharing it with you oh happy Laundry people- It feels quite nice.
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2 Responses to “Like riding a bicycle”
Posted: Nov 22nd, 2007 at 10:41 am
I played the violin for 7 years, from age 8. Finally my teacher told me I’d hit my ceiling and couldn’t get any better (not in a good way). I can still play a sea shanty so the joke’s on her.
Posted: Nov 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 am
I remember learning the alphabet… my best friend Tessa and I learnt it in the garden one golden summer’s day in about 1986. We sat and swang on the swing singing the alphabet repeatedly.
It was such an achievment for two little girls, learning all 26 letters, in order, in song, that we wanted to share our achievment with everyone, for the next 6 hours, or untill bedtime.
Needless to say, everyone else was quite fed up with us by then, but it didn’t lessen our achievment. These days I go out with a lovely boy called James who can do the alphabet backwards. He learnt it as a child because he thought it would make him magic!