Being a dad: The hill

As my sons have grown, I have often told them, "You can always serve as a bad example," not encouraging them to be such, but hoping they will learn from the mistakes and rebellions of my past rather than going through it themselves.

Having been a dad for twenty-two years now, I've bumbled a few (thousand?) times along the parental pathway. One event still makes me chuckle some fifteen years after the fact.

When we lived in Utah, our house sat nestled in a cul de sac at the bottom of a hill, a great place to sled through front yards but a challenging place to learn to ride a bike. So after Drew got a bicycle for his birthday, we pushed our bikes up the hill to practice riding in the very flat school parking lot. You know initial riding lessons. How to balance. How to break.

Drew picked up the concepts of pedaling forward to move forward and back-pedaling to brake the bike. As we made our way home and stood on the sidewalk at the top of the hill, I asked Drew if he thought he could brake himself down the hill. You know, dad's have to challenge their sons beyond that which they are capable of handling. He nodded with nervous confidence. My plan was to ride alongside him and grab onto the scruff of his jacket to slow him down if he got to going to fast.

That was my plan.

Drew got started down the hill, and I started to follow. "Brake," I encouraged hoping he would apply what he had just learned. Instead his eyes widened at the mountain he began hurtling down. "BRAKE!" I yelled as the foolishness of my plan unfolded before my eyes.

From behind I could see his shoulders freeze into a panicked hunch as his fingers attempted to squeeze the handlebars into submission. His feet stopped moving as the bicycle approached the mach. I began to peddle faster imagining the aftermath to this ill-conceived idea. How will I explain this to Tracy? How bad would eight broken bones look?

"BRAKE!" I pleaded. I may as well have been speaking Japanese.

I can only attribute the fact that that swervy, training-wheeled bike missed three mature trees, a fire hydrant and two very nice, driveway-parked cars to God's divine hand because Drew sure wasn't steering. Ker-thunk! At the bottom of the hill, having passed five houses, he struck the spare tire on the back of the jeep in our neighbors driveway and came to an abrupt halt.

When I caught up to him, Drew lay on his back blinking into the cloudy sky. He was huffing and puffing like he'd pedaled uphill and his eyes had the look of suprise one gets when they find they have not died. No, Drew did not die that day. Nor did he acquire an broken bones. Not even a gash. Not a scratch.

There's a line from Star Trek that runs, "Fate. It protects fools, little children, and ships named "Enterprise."" If I may. God. He protects fools and their little children who they send down the hill on their training wheels three minutes after teaching them to use their brakes.

We get a huge belly-laugh whenever we recount that story--with a humongous tip of the hat to the Lord!