Bicycle Race

People will forget
what you said

People will forget 
what you did
But people will never forget

how you made them feel.

- Maya Angelou

We were talking modern and post modern stuff in communication technology. Somewhere in the discussion was a mention of old bicycles. Professor R drew an example of what bicycles were like around the early years of its invention. I thought her drawing was enough to make me recall the same figure I saw on encyclopedias as a kid. Classmates chuckled their amused curiosity.

My own association with this ancient bike model has since been psychological bashing around a paper I presented at a national research conference. It turned out Professor R was chair of the steering committee that decided the fate of my thesis, one of many under Humanities. She launched an eloquent critique looking like she was going to eat me alive in front of those co-presenters. Academically vicious. She is beauty and brains personified.

Mentally comatose from the scholarly beating, my eyes were probably as wide as the rear wheel of this bicycle when I was called up on stage the next day. There was an award for my paper. It had nothing to do with bicycles. I worked my neck on communication apprehension- rolling up and down, waggling right and left. Much like someone learning to ride a bike.

 Photo

Which brings me to a fact: I can't ride a bike. Really. I marvel at this innate balance on wheels most people possess.  And a deceased older cousin's craze for the Queen. He would play their hits over and over all day long. Another One Bites the Dust, We Will Rock You, Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are the Champions were steady background to those jacks and hopscotch I played with other cousins. It was the late 70s. We were a close family. Amazing how I would sing along a sprinkling of lyrics here and there now well stuck in my head - 

"You say black, I say white; you say Rolls, I say Royce ... give me a choice!... I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman..." and I truly believed in all three of them then. Oh, to be a child! Some childhood. It was the Queen, without Her Majesty, instead of the normal princesses or knights in shining armor. Someone who has zero poise on a wheelset misses Freddie.

~ Sepia Saturday * Time Travel ~