Hi Friends,
This is your weekly edition of The Friday Five Hundred, which is a slice of my writerly life packaged in nuggets of Present, Past and Future in five hundred words or less.
Present: My husband and I decided to get our daughters an upgrade in their bicycles. We went to our local bike shop. The girls were delighted with their new bikes and had a fun time perusing the bike shop. The bikes had to be fitted with training wheels since all of my kids still need them. In fact, I’m still on training wheels.
Past: I never learned how to ride a bike as a child. It seems like an important childhood milestone I didn’t reach and enjoy. When we immigrated to the US, surviving was top most priority. There was no time to own a bike and learn how to ride one. Now that I have conveniently blamed my circumstances, I would like to say that I also didn’t express an interest in learning how to ride a bike.
Back to Present: I asked the bike shop owner if he had adult sized bikes with training wheels. He said there were some that could support training wheels and there was also a tricycle. I took a look at my options. If I buy a tricycle then there will be no anticipation of taking the training wheels off to see if I can balance the bike myself. It will be a short cut. I told the owner that I’d think about it and come back to him next week. I came home and because social media follows me everywhere, I was suggested a video in which a woman who never learned how to ride a bike was gifted the same exact tricycle I had seen at the store. She seemed so happy and I thought that I can also live that happiness. Maybe I have surpassed the age of learning to ride a bike and should opt for a tricycle.
Leaning forward to the Future: As my kids test drove the bicycles at home, I wondered when their training wheels would come off. Through words, I tried to motivate them and then I thought, “How can I expect my kids to leave their training wheels when I haven’t left mine?” I wanted to feel the thrill of riding a bike and so I test drove each of the three bikes owned by my kids. I had a fun goldilocks moment. | 
