my first bicycle

i thought i would kick off this exercise with a good, happy story of my youth with my dad. there are not too many of these, so i thought it would be a good place to start.

this is what i remember:

i couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 years old, because i believe we left germany before i was six. we lived in the air base's apartment housing and there were loads of kids around my age. we used to make up all sorts of games, pretending we were horses or picking wild mushrooms to feed to the unicorns. but what i really, truly wanted was my very own bicycle.

my parents did not have much money, and i am not sure how well i knew that by then. it sure didn't keep me from begging for a bike all the time. it never failed--i would ask my mom and dad, "please, can i have a bike?" the response was always the same--no. i knew just what i wanted the bike to look like; it was the quintessential little girl's bike.

one evening, after dinner, i thought i would give it just one more shot. it was nowhere near my birthday or christmas, so i knew i was pressing my luck.

"daddy, please can i have a bike?" instead of going straight for the canned response he asked, "well, what color would you want it to be?"

"pink. i want a pink bicycle."

"should it have a basket?"

"yes, a white one. and a white seat."

it went on and on like this, my dad asking me all of the important questions about what my bicycle should look like and me diligently responding as though i were filling out a customer order form.

"alright, let's see if we can make it to the base exchange in time. i don't know if we will get there before it closes." i was thrilled--i was going to have my very first bike!

we rushed to put our socks and shoes on and raced down to the car. my dad looked at his watch, shaked his head and said, "i'm sorry, brooke. i don't think we're going to be able to make it in time." tears welled up in my eyes, but before a single one could fall he had popped the trunk. there, in a box, was my bicycle. my first bicycle ever. exactly as we had described it together.

it was pink, with a white seat, white handle bars and a white basket on the front. on the side it said theodor (which i believed, possibly for years, read the odor--a terribly strange name for a girl's bike in my opinion) my dad spent the next day putting it together and securing the training wheels so that i could ride it. friends and i decorated the bike with little white flowers we picked off of the shrubs around the apartment's playground.

i had that bicycle for a number of years. it took a long time before i was able to ride it without the training wheels. after that first day, i do not remember my dad spending any more time with me and my bicycle. i am not even sure how the training wheels came off. i think it was when i was in the third grade that it was stolen from the base housing where we lived in arizona. i did not have a bike of my own again until i was in college.