1-22-09

Childhood memories bring out the fears of new fathers

A few weekends ago, my good friend and neighbor Will and I were welcoming in the first part of a Saturday morning which started on a Friday night.
At some point in the evening, we started talking about our childhood and traded stories of getting hurt and times that we should have been in a hospital or worse.
We then realized that we both had sons that would soon be doing the same things that we once did. Talk about a sobering realization.
“What are you gonna do?” Will said with a look of somewhat clarity in his eyes. “The heck if I know.” I said throwing my hands up and reaching into the garage refrigerator.
My son already loves motorcycles and Will’s boy loves his horses. Chances are, between the two of them, there will be a day that comes when one of their mothers will look out of a kitchen window and see them strapping a ramp to the back of a horse while the other is revving up a mini bike waiting for the “Go!”
When I was seven years old, my father had two motorcycles. I wanted one, too. He told me that if I learned to ride without the training wheels on my spray painted brown yard sale bike that I could get a motorcycle.
It didn’t take too long for me to ride a straight line down the driveway.
I thought I was going to see an “Easyrider” style chopper in my front yard the next day.
Boy was I mistaken. A few weeks later my dad showed up with a bright yellow Suzuki Jr. 50.
Not quite Dennis Hopper, but it would do.
Dad started it up, explained the throttle, hand brake and foot brake. He set me on the elongated black naugahide seat and before he could talk me through the “ease the throttle back” part, I had pulled all the way back and went flying across the back yard. Luckily, our neighbors had a tall chain-link fence.
I ran full speed ahead into the fence and somehow, like a 1930’s board track racer, I ran up the fence, to the left, and back down onto the flat ground.
To my surprise, and my parents and probably the neighbors at this point, I was still rolling.
Good thing was that I was still right side up. Bad thing was that a full bloomed, large Forsythia bush was now in my flight path.
I wasn’t sure if the bush was placed there to help aid as part of my seven-year-old driver’s test or just a cruel joke by the motorcycle gods.
I had no choice... and no experience with these types of obstacles. So, like an Evil Knievel who forgot to pull up, I plowed right into the unsuspecting yellow flowered bush.
I, to this day, still remember flying over the little handle bars and landing in the bush as my new chopper idled and ate up Wisteria limbs in its little chain.
So, will my son get a motorcycle when he shows that he has the skills to ride without training wheels? Sure.
We don’t have a chain link fence in sight of our property and I, to this day, and in the future will never have a Forsynthia bush in my yard.
Bryan Pinkey can be reached picking yellow petals out of his teeth or at bpinkey@nccox.com.