One of the hardest lessons I learned as a parent is: Although my son is my own flesh and blood, he is not a miniature version of me. Certainly, there are amazing similarities-- the face, the shape of his body as I remember my own 18-year-old self, the sound of his voice, the way he holds his hands when he sits in a chair, his impish desire to insert just one more funny line into any conversation. These visual cues tell my logical mind that just like other clues in the physical world, we must be the same. So, when he decided he was uninterested in riding a bike, it defied my imagination.

My bike was similar to this one. I removed the fenders and replaced the handlebars with drop-down racing bars.

In my youth, a bike equalled freedom like nothing else. With a bike, I could ride to the other side of town, visit school friends, or simply explore where the railroad tracks led. I could go back and forth to baseball practice. I could ride to the small patch of greenspace by my school to explore, occasionally finding other boys' Playboy magazines stashed away in plastic bags under fallen trees, safe from their mother's eyes. My bike carried me from my parents' warnings and judgements and into the wide world I innocently hoped to shape with my own ideas, beliefs, and dreams. With a bike, I could go almost anywhere.

As a dutiful father then, I tried to teach my son to ride a bike when he was four years old. Running along side, holding the seat, shouting out, "Balance! Keep peddling!" All to no avail. "Maybe he's a little too young still," I thought to myself. So again, the following summer I ran along side, holding the seat. Nope, not that year either.

We, or should I say I, tried several more times during his pre-teen years. I knew that it wasn't lack of ability or coordination-- he performed other athletic feats admirably. Ultimately, he simply wasn't interested in it, so he didn't really try very hard. He got bored and frustrated with me being overly enthusiastic. I got mad because he wasn't trying hard enough and, worse yet, wasn't living up to my perceptions of what he should be.

Stubbornly refusing to give in, I'd bring the subject up from time to time. He could sense the subject was about to burst forth with the first warm days of spring, but despite his knowing the annual ritual was about to begin he almost flinched when I said the word "bike."

Finally, one year I got him to talk about why he didn't want to learn to ride a bike instead of us first falling into the typical head-butting. One sentence stunned me: "What's the point?"

What's the point? I was aghast. How could he not know what the point was? Freedom! Mobility! Exploration! The American Way, for God's sake! What could possibly be wrong with this boy that he would turn down such an amazing gift? But when my head cleared I began to think about what he said. He had found a bit of his own truth.

First, I realized my expectations were more about me than him. I wanted to give him something that was like gold to me. But one man's treasure is another man's trash. This was a hard lesson for me to learn and embrace. Just because I valued something didn't mean my son would hold the same esteem for it. My own father had made the same mistake with me many times. He loathed team sports for reasons unexplained and then moped through my baseball games. He offered little encouragement of my guitar playing because I wasn't playing music he liked. He even asked me once how I grew up in the same house as my older brother. For most of our lives together this unwillingness to accept my individuality was the wedge that kept my father and I apart. I swore as a young man I wouldn't do the same thing to my own children, but remembering that vow when I too became a father was harder than I imagined. See John Sebastian's "Younger Generation" for a soundtrack to this paragraph.

Even that doesn't completely explain why my son didn't want to ride a bike though. Certainly, a part of his resistance was standing up to me and trying to define his own independence and individuality. For awhile, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn't connect the dots...

Then, I realized that he might not be able to connect the dots either and I mean that almost literally. I grew up in a community with sidewalks, corner drugstores, and a snowcone stand during the summer. I stayed out just a little past dark playing tag and hide-and-seek and then sat and watched the stars in my own backyard. I played sports in the park with kids I didn't even know, but who showed up on the schoolgrounds hoping for a game. I once counted the number of steps from my front door to my school desk. I knew if I peddled hard down the hill when the stoplight was still red that I could make it through the intersection before it turned red again. I knew these things in the space of "empty" time it took to walk or ride a bike to these places. Because of this, I had a physical, palpable connection with my neighborhood.

My son's world is subdivisions without sidewalks, schools you can't walk to because you have to cross a divided highway, kids who aren't allowed to play outside without supervision because their parents are afraid of abductors, organized sports instead of pick-up games, and vanishing green space. No wonder he didn't see the point of learning to ride a bike. Beyond the end of his cul de sac, what adventure could be found on the winding streets of a suburban subdivision? I think I understand his point now.

The April 24 edition of Newsweek featured a column by Carolyn V. Egan entitled, "Sidewalks Can Make a Town a Neighborhood." Her column brought back all of these memories vividly. As Carolyn puts it, "We've forgotten the joy of roaming." I wonder what else we've forgotten to teach our children and how many youthful vows have been misplaced by their parents?

Note: My son learned to ride a bike, not because I wanted him to, but because peer pressure and the possible embarassment of not knowing became too great. To this day, he does not ride a bike for pleasure.

Note Again: The title for this installment comes from a Queen song and my high school days. Not a meaningful, weighty song (that would be Fat Bottom Girls) to be sure, Queen could craft some amazing music.