The bears are going to eat me Daddy!

So I get that yesterday was Father's day and I meant to have posted this yesterday in honor of Pops but I didn't get around to it. Eh, it is what it is, our relationship is tenuous these days.

My parents separated when I was round about the age of 5 in the most mature way possible. I went to school from one house and came home clear across town and my gramma broke the news to me by saying 'Anna, you moved while you were at school. Ask your mother about it.'

I was an intuitive child so I knew how to roll with the punches relatively early and shrugged it off and ran with it. I stayed at the same school so it wasn't too big of a deal and honestly my new house had a sweet new play room that was all mine so I wasn't too nonplussed about the whole thing.

The point of this being that my father had this unyielding need to prove that he was still my dad and was still going to be in life and the first manifestation of this was that I was going to learn how to ride my bike without the training wheels.

I had the most awesome little girl bike EVER. It was purple and had purple tires and purple streamers. Seriously I was in love. I think he bought the purple one because it was my mom's favorite color, I wanted a red one but I was so stoked about the whole thing I didn't argue because hey, I was going to learn to ride my bike without the training wheels!

So off to the middle school we would go. The middle school (Which I eventually attended.) had a dirt/gravel track down in a gulley. The area I live in is moderately hilly so flat things normally end up in a depression or a gulley for those of you hip to the North Carolina vernacular. This track was surrounded on two sides by steep hills going up to the school and the other two sides sloped mildly downwards and had a nice smattering of trees between the school property and the adjacent neighborhood, this part is important later in this story.

We would go there on every other weekeend and I would tear around the track a couple of times on my training wheels proud as hell and then Dad would coax me into allowing him to take them off and then we'd argue for a significant period of time about whether or not today would be the day I'd actually get on the bike without the training wheels because I wasn't stupid, I realized that even though I loved my purple bike it was nothing but a death trap and I wasn't having any of it.

I was a somewhat obstinate child. Surprised? I'm sure you are.

Eventually his patience would wane and he'd pick the bike up and climb up the hill to the car and I'd stomp up the hill angry and disappointed. I wanted to learn to ride my bike without the training wheels I just didn't want to die is all. Or I would have also gone along with just telling everyone I had done it without really having done it. That would have been ideal as well. This whole bike riding thing seemed unnecessarily dangerous.

Time goes by and we repeat this whole exercise ad naseum weekend after weekend and finally Father dearest gets fed up. Today, dammit, I will ride my bike without my training wheels because by God, he did not buy me a bike to ride it like a wuss my entire life. Why in the world he was ready to throw out my entire future because of this I'm not sure of but I always got the feeling he'd much rather me have been tougher than I was. Luckily for him it wasn't his constant nagging that made me so damn hard-nosed in my current old age, it was his stupid decisions and bullshit ideas that made me that way, so in the end he still wins.

He takes the training wheels off of my bike and threatens my life unless I get on the damn thing and ride. Of course I do because at the tender age of 5 I still wanted to make him happy, this went away several years later. The first time around the track he held onto the bike and we went very slowly and it was brilliant and I was super proud of myself and ready to call it a day and what does he, in his infinite wisdom, decide? TO LET GO OF THE BIKE WITHOUT TELLING ME.

I'm tearing around the track at pretty much full speed that a skinny 5 year old can muster and I look back to say 'Look Dad aren't you proud?' and he is GONE. I of course begin to freak and as I'm round the second corner heading down the back straightway I lose control of the bike and I fall to my right and land at the edge of the woods upon which I immediately scream,

'DADDY DADDY THE BEARS ARE GOING TO EAT ME! THE BEARS ARE GOING TO EAT ME DADDY!'

Look, I was 5 and had read enough children's nature books to know that bears lived in the woods so it was a completely logical assumption that bears would be living in those woods and would be hungry as it was after lunch and I was kind of hungry.

Does my father come tearing across the field to save me from the bears? No. He leans over and laughs so hard he practically heaves his lunch onto the track. After what seems like an eternity upon which I've had to crawl on my hands and knees to escape the ravenous carnivores he ambles over, still laughing mind you, to tell me that he'd be surprised if jackrabbits lived in those woods but there were definitely not any bears and I was definitely not going to be eaten. I remember this distinctly because I wasn't aware that rabbits were named Jack and I wondered if all rabbits were named Jack, even the female ones.

But in true female form I got up dusted myself off and stomped across the field and up the hill and sat at the car until he brought my bike up the hill because I refused to ride it anymore after that. Especially if he wasn't going to protect me from the dangers of the woods.

Oddly enough I never rode my bike with training wheels again after that, I just picked it up one day a few weeks later got on it and rode down the road.

So I guess in a somewhat convoluted way I have my father to thank for my ability to ride my bike. Even if the whole experience was marred by fear, violence and sheer embarrassment.

Thanks for that Dad.