By Jared Mercer
throat punch
That feeling of riding a bike. That’s what is was like, it was as if I was on a bike for the first time without training wheels and maybe without a helmet too so my hair could blow in the wind. The warm afternoon sun beats down on me as I ride down the street away from my parents who had been running beside me to make sure I was not going to tip over on this new two-wheeler. A block away from the house on your own without the close watchful eye of your lifelong guardian for the first time seems pretty thrilling, especially when you are moving at what seems to be a high speed.
As I looked over my shoulder to see my father growing smaller and smaller as I make my escape to a terrifying freedom, I realize I should turn around. As enticing as such “freedom” may have been at such a young age, I would have much rather lived in what was the prison yard of my home. It was at this point that I realized that my bike seat had been raised far too high and my feet could not reach the ground if I did decide to slow to an ill-advised stop. My father always raised my seat (and my siblings’) so high that our feet could barely reach the ground because he said that while pedaling the bicycle your leg should extend fully when it reaches the bottom because that gives you the most power. Such power was needed to ride fast and not tip over after the training wheels were removed, and power to escape from the house should I ever decide to. My sister to this day still pedals with her heels as opposed to the part of your foot where your toes connect, to the ever lasting disgust of my father. But her legs went straight while she rode, he made sure of that. None of us could use tools when we were young so when dad raised our seats to what he thought was a satisfactory level, it stayed that way.
Returning from my thoughts to my current situation, I stimulated the part of my brain that kicks my muscles into action, which took my leg and attempted to to put it down on the ground after a smooth pressing back on the pedals to engage the breaks. Needless to say, my leg did not reach and I fell straight down to my left side catching my fall and the majority of my ninety pound frame with my chin and nose. Luckily since my face braced the rest of my body as it came down, much of my torso remained unscathed. Knee and hand scrapes aside I escaped with the only long term injury of a chipped tooth. As my father began sprinting down the street to come to my side I thought to myself how much better prison life treated me than I could treat myself. I don’t know what to do with freedom and human relations make me nervous. This is how is felt to meet Odelia. What a great escape from a life less ordinary. What a sucker punch to the throat.
3 Comments
It is interesting to read about your life perspective and in particular the perspective you have of your father.
He does seem to be a man of persuasive opinion. Do you see him as a person interested in (perhaps obsessed) in power? The leg down-stroke reference being an example.
Have you escaped the prison of your home?
And what of the disappointment he has in your sister’s heel to pedal thrust? Has, or is her able to come to terms with this?
The height of your bicycle seats is also interesting. Is this a representation of expectations your father has for you, and your sister?
As I said, what an interesting article.
Generally when I write little shorts I take something from real life so that I can relate to it and then make up the rest. So those who were around during my learning to ride a bike may recognize a few parts of it that are real and then think that they fit into the story and I am trying to write about them. This is in fact not the case. The whole father figure was made up except I used a couple of funny instances from my real life experiences and threw them in there before making the father seem a bit tyrannical, which is obviously not my own father.
Have I given more thought to what the father in my story thinks? Not really. It is not a representation of anyone, but maybe others will read it and feel it fits the father in their lives, which could be good or bad.
A good response.
It is a generally held believe that writer’s do best when they work from a personal point of view or experience.
Reading too much into this would be another common circumstance.