These are my KONFESSIONS

I think there's something that you should know.  I probably should have gotten this taken care of a while ago, but I still haven't done it so I might as well just admit it now.

I don't know how to ride a bike.

I know, I know.  It's like a childhood staple.  But I just never... learned.  It's like my parents just gave up on me when I wasn't enthused.  I was a strange child, to say the least.  And this was one of the oddities that defined who I was and who I still am today, at nearly 21 years old.

A non-rider of bikes.

I tried to learn a couple summers ago but it was a failed attempt and I still cannot do it.  It was a hot day in the middle of the summer, and a couple of my friends and I got bagels and plotted to teach me in a cul-de-sac.  I had collected a bike from my garage that hasn’t had much use in recent years, and we headed off to begin my lesson.

Now, maybe I would have learned better on a normal bike.  But no.  Of course this bike had extra skinny wheels.  They were practically paper thin.  Also the bike was old, and the chains were rusty.  Basically it was a death trap.

So my friends told me how to go about this venture.  Sit on bike.  Put feet on pedals.  Push off and go.  Nobody was around, and we had the street to ourselves.  I could safely maneuver the area without fear of getting hit by a car or getting eaten by a lion.  Easy enough, right?

Wrong.  DEATH TRAP, remember?  The bike was trying to kill me.  I couldn’t make it 3 feet.  I didn’t really even WANT to do this anymore.  One of my friend’s little sisters were riding circles around me as if to taunt me, telling me I couldn’t do this.  I can’t ride a bike and I never will and they’re better than me and I don’t even deserve to ride a bike because at this point I was 19 years old and I was as good as dead without the skill anyway so no point.

And it makes me sad to say this, but I gave up.

Honestly, I am sort of afraid to try again.  I have good balance and agility and I'm pretty good at learning new skills, but let's be real here.  I am tall.  And therefore my distance from the ground to the bike is much greater than if I was a 5 year old.  This distance may be small by perhaps dinosaur standards, but it is not by my standards.  It is an enormous gap of space, so enormous I might as well be an ant trying to learn how to ride a bike.  That fall could be fatal.

So I am writing this post today mainly as a confession that I lack a skill that most people have by the age of 7.  And also to see if there’s anyone out there willing to take me on as a pupil.  I want to learn.  I am ready to learn, and I will not give up this time.  Bloody knees be damned, I must become a bicycle rider.

I have also determined that this must happen this coming summer so that when the Apocalypse happens at the end of the year and cars stop working, I can at least attempt to ride away from the Zombies and the fire storms and the big black hole in the middle of the earth.