Keeping hold

Remember that fearful age, that point in time when your father said you should be riding a bike?
And remember the fateful day when he screwed you down into the saddle of just such a bike and made you ride?
We’ve all seen that now clichéd scene played out… “Don’t let go, dad!”
“Don’t worry, son. I’ve got you.” And then, “Look son, you’re riding, you’re doing it on your own!”
What did it feel like, that moment when your parent let go of you? Did you feel your blood coursing through your veins? Did you see the world and its endless possibilities suddenly open out before you and feel like you could fly above it all?
Or did the full weight of this world, all its possible dangers and endless responsibilities, suddenly climb on behind you to make your bike swerve and wobble? Did hitting the ground that first time feel like your umbilical cord had severed once more? That innate trust and protection you’d always counted on, suddenly comes with a healthy dose of mistrust.
Who knows which of those two types of people are the lucky ones? But Kevin, he loved to ride. Even today, if you’d looked out of your window at about 4pm you might have seen him.
He’s got a great bike. A Burner 2 BMX in Midnight Black with internal Gyro and 48 spoked wheels, alloy V-brakes, freestyle saddle and two pegs.
He knows the specs off by heart because he read them so many times when he was looking at the bike in the catalogue. It’s not the best bike in the world, far from it. But his parents told him how much they could spend and he picked the bike accordingly. What’s more, the other kids don’t make jokes about it, which is helpful.
Today Kevin is riding in great loops of his neighbourhood. He started with a small loop, along his road and then a quick dart into the alley that runs behind all the gardens. He pedals down here as fast as he dares, knowing that any moment a dog or a neighbour might appear and cause a small wreck!
After the successful completion of this stage, it’s a ring right around the houses, taking in Arbour Avenue along with Kevin’s own street, Daleside Close. Once he’s successfully completed each stage, Kevin looks for the next route, the bigger challenge.
He’s still wearing the knee and elbow pads his mother laid out for him this morning (knowing his BMX-inspired plans for the day) but he’s cast off his helmet, chucking it over the fence into his back yard as he whizzed down the alley earlier. Let’s face it, no-one looks cool in a helmet.
At school, the teacher told his class a story about a boy, of about Kevin’s age, who received a brand new bike for his birthday and rode it along the street that very day. This boy hit something (a rock, a tin can, who knows?) and was sent sailing from his saddle onto his head.
The teacher seemed to take great delight in describing the spinal injuries suffered in the crash, and the fact that this boy of boundless energy was now capable of riding only a wheelchair.
“And what item of safety wear could have saved him?” The teacher would ask this to the class, and the class would have to repeat as one: “A HELMET!”
Maybe this story was the sole reason no boy in Kevin’s class ever wore a bicycle helmet. Not that the tale didn’t make an impression on him, but how many kids are riding round in a wheelchair because they didn’t wear a helmet?
At some point, on the final stage of his fastest ever loop of the High Street/Kendal Lane/Melling Road/Daleside Close circuit, Kevin swerved away from a reversing neighbour and clipped the kerb.
His Midnight Black Burner 2 with internal Gyro flipped over a wall and embedded itself in a hawthorn bush.
Kevin himself came over the handlebars and landed on his right shoulder. If you could have watched his crash in slow motion you would have seen his arms reaching out in desperation to break his fall. And you would have seen his body half-somersault so that his arms could never quite touch any part of the ground before his torso did.
He scraped his back and legs pretty badly, and his collar bone was broken, but his head, neck and spine were unharmed.
Still, Kevin didn’t know that at the time and he was pretty scared. All he knew was that he couldn’t get up and there were people standing gravely around him.
Kevin had tears in his eyes and he was crying out. Crying out for his dad: “Get my dad, he’ll know what to do. Someone get my dad.”
And soon his dad came, and his dad knew what to do this time, just like he’d known what to do that first time when Kevin had swerved, wobbled and fallen.
When the overwhelming fear of responsibility and lone struggle had gripped his young mind and brought him crashing to the ground, his father was there running towards him with healing arms and that strange habit of always knowing exactly what needed to be done.