Pull Up

I'm so sore right now that my fingernails hurt. Last night I decided that I needed to take my workout to the next level, so after going to the gym and pushing the stroller around town--a distance so far that it would be pointless to measure in miles, so instead we'll measure it in 1960s civil rights marches--I then went on a 20 mile bike ride around town. So that's weight lifting, Montgomery Bus Boycotting and then riding 20 miles on my bike. I'm tired. But you know, I'm kinda proud. This bike riding thing went easily compared to my childhood (cue the flashback music and dissolving screen)

The year was 1990. The place: The since-demolished George Washington Carver Apartments (built solely out of red brick peanuts) near the Shrimp Boat. Me and my friends were riding our bikes around the apartment complex when the new kid decided to go off script and show how cool he was. The complex was about twenty buildings on a big hill connected by a lot of grass and stairs. This guy decided that riding down the sidewalk was too 1989 so he walked his bike up one of those grassy hills, rode down full speed and then when he got to a flight of stairs he used the momentum to jump the stairs.

Like the followers that they were, everybody else did the same thing. "That was bumpin!" the little heathens shouted. "C'mon Ordale. Don't be scared." Normally, peer pressure meant nothing to me, but this particular day she was there. Her name was Tatiana. She was the younger sister of one of my friends and this girl was baaaad. Her "days of the week" barrettes always matched what day it was, she always smelled like "Just For Me" and on this particular day she shared her Now & Laters with me. These were the new red, white and blue Now & Laters--the softer chewier ones--so I knew she was feeling me. I couldn't punk out. I went to the top of the hill, pedaled down really fast and things were looking good.

Now let's have a quick conversation about Physics. An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless it comes into contact with an equal or greater force. In the mind of an eight year old this means that all you have to do is just be going really fast when you get to the top of the stairs. In his undeveloped mind, he believes that inertia will cause you to just glide over the remaining stairs until you reach the ground. He is a fool because he fails to understand that the minute the front wheel leaves the safety of the ground, you immediately come into contact with a greater force...called GRAVITY. Gravity pulls that front wheel downward and...well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I raced down the hill and got to the stairs. At no point did it occur to me that I needed to pull up on the handlebars and force the bike upward to counter the impending gravitational pull. So instead of doing a mini jump right before I went off the stairs...I did nothing. At about 20 miles an hour, my front wheel glided over the top step for all of 4 nanoseconds before being pulled towards the earth, hitting the second step and thus causing the rest of my bike to flip over in cartoonish fashion for what seemed like an hour and a half while my head, hands, arms, knees, legs, feet, and back made contact (one at a time) with the ten stairs before coming to rest on the ground and then having the bike land on top of me one last time before skidding and coming to rest inches from Tatiana who shouted, "Is he dead?"

In my mind, I stood up unscathed while everyone around me clapped like the end of Cool Runnings. I carried the bike on my shoulders back to the house and returned to the stairs the next day as an equal. In reality, however, I think I started coming to when I heard my friend's mother yell out the window, "Nathaniel, In Living Color's on!" I heard that and "I hope you feel better Ordale" as everyone ran in the house.

"Everybody here is equally kind. What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. And how do you feel knowing everybody was your friend from thin to thick and through thick and thin and even egotistical trips was put to an end...In living c-c-c-color."