Learning to ride a bike.

This may not seem like much to many of you; however, my experience with learning was not normal. When I was 8 years old my brother just older than me was trying to teach me to ride a bike. The bike that we used was too large for me and I could barely reach the ground when on it. It was also made of steel which made it heavy and hard to handle for someone big enough to ride it. If all this wasn’t bad enough, we were trying to learn on a gravel driveway that was slanted uphill. As I think about it now I am not sure why we didn’t try to ride downhill. Not that the hill was very steep in that direction. Each time I tried to ride I would fall over before I ever got going. I would try this a few times and get frustrated. We tried this a few other times with no success.

With this being the bike, you may wonder how I ever learned how to ride. Well, it wasn’t on this bike, it was on the bike of a friend. One day this friend was getting his bike back from the shop. I told him that I didn’t know how to ride and he said that he would teach me how. When he got his bike back from the shop, he showed me a few things such has how to turn. He lived on cul-de-sac so I was to ride to the end of the road and back. My friend was thinking that it would take me a while to get the hang of riding; however, I got on the bike, rode to the end of the street, turned around, and came back as though I had been riding a bike for many years. After I got back he asked about this and I told him that I really had never ridden a bike before. I guess the help that my brother had given me helped me to ride a bike once I had one that was the right size for me. 

Sharing Childhood Stories

Today we had a lesson on Family History in Sunday School. This got me to thinking that I have many stories about my childhood that my children don't know about. So, I have decided that I am going to try to write one story a week. A few of the topics that I will be sharing are: learning to ride a bike, my first childhood memories, spending a lot of time at the University Mall when I was in 4th grade, some of the childhood jobs and had and how they didn't teach me money management, and others. This will be a trip down memory lane and I hope you will come along for the journey as we reminisce about old times.