Day 5

Your proudest moment

I think I’ve mentioned before that darn near ever day that I spend with my son ends up turning into a new favorite memory of mine. Like each new memory somehow wipes away the old. However… When I read this, one specific memory came to mind. The time that I taught Noodle how to ride his bike without training wheels. I’ve only ever done this one time, so I’m not sure if I had the proper reaction, but when it was all said and done I broke down into tears (apparently big boys DO cry).

So there we were, talking about my favorite trail to run on, Noodle asked about bringing his bike there and I responded with something to the effect of “we’ll have to get the training wheels off of your bike first, they might get damaged on that trail”. Which, is true, but I probably could have picked a better way to say it.  So,Remember when I told you that my son is a genius? This freaking genius, without missing a beat, goes “let’s take them off then!” Yep, two plus two is obviously four, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for this sort of math.

We took the training wheels off, went to a park by my mom’s old house, Noodle dawned his helmet, knee, and elbow pads… And there was nowhere to ride. I mean, in my head the grass was a good idea. But, it was soft, and littered with twigs. There was the sidewalk, by there were other runners and bikers. So we took a little walk and ended up practicing behind a strip mall adjacent to the park. On the pavement. I walk/ran behind him, holding his seat with one hand to steady it. And after a few false starts, I let go, and he was off.

He must’ve gone a good 20 feet before looking back and… Now this was the scariest part of all. All I could think about was the sheer panic that would wash across his face once he realized that I wasn’t there and whether or no I’d be able to run and catch him before he fell over.  But, the genius didn’t fall! Not even close. He looked at me, skidded to a stop, put his foot down, let out a yell, and raised his arms in excitement. He stuck the landing, 10 points. After that there were a few more assisted starts, like MAYBE a handful more, and he got the hang of it. Freaking GENIUS, I tell ya. We rode bikes together for the rest of the day, practicing turning and stopping, and then he thanked me. ANNDDD. I. LOST. IT.

When I dropped him back off with his mother he ran up to her and said “we rode bikes, WITH NO TRAINING WHEELS! And Daddy cried”. No filter on this kid, I swear. But yeah, definitely going down in the books as one of my proudest moments.

~

Until next time, it’s like riding a bike.

P.S. Here he is, Noodle in all of his glory, ready to conquer those training wheels, or lack there of.

P.S.S. Two pictures!? I couldn’t decide which one to use for this post, so I used both, you’re welcome. Eventually we made it out to the trail that started all of this, and took this beautiful picture of Noodle pretending to laugh at one of my dad jokes. Looking back on it now (years later) it looks more like the face that he makes when he’s thinking “I can’t believe my dad just told that horrible joke” than the one he makes when he’s pretending to laugh… But, we are going to go with it being a picture of him laughing, or at least pretending to.