11. DIRTY THEIVING BASTARDS.....

Here’s a quick generational identification test – Its beach holiday time. Pack up the Volvo, back seats down, kids tucked up snug and horizontal (and seatbeltless) in our sleeping bags for the after dark drive down the coast to the holiday house.

Is this:

A. A warm and happy picture of family contentment.

B. The first 30 seconds of a soon to be horrific road safety ad.

Things were different then. Like how exactly did my parents allow me to ride my new 10 speed down Pennant Hills Road, in the middle of peak hour, without a helmet, every day to school? Why did the Government allow it? It’s some kind of abuse I’m sure.

I rode it here, I rode it there. And lessons were learnt. I learnt for example that I could pump up the tyres in my new bike a lot more than on the dragster. More specifically, I learnt that if I didn’t pump the tyres up a lot more, I would get what I now know as ‘pinch flats’ pretty much every time I hit a bump. Mind you, I didn’t learn this lesson quickly. Many tyres were patched. Bad words were used.

I learnt that riding in the rain, or even soon after the rain, left a wet stripe right up the middle of my arse. I learnt that riding through long grass is dangerous when that long grass is obscuring a 2 metre deep open concrete storm drain and that loose front axle bolts will eventually allow your front wheel to take itself elsewhere when you ride off a gutter (and that top tubes hurt when you slam your balls into them as a result of your front wheel being elsewhere).

I also learnt that some people, given the opportunity, will steal your bike from right out of your driveway. My parents of course knew that this was the case and told me so, but were ignored on account of them being parents and therefore less knowledgeable about, well just about everything. So thieving bastards stole my bike. Not only that – they then spray painted it white and rode it around the local area in front of me.

Immediately identifying an opportunity to make a point, my parents demanded I work to get the money to pay for replacing the bike they had spent their own hard earned cash on. Lacking a handy salt mine or Conan the Barbarian style Wheel of Pain, it was the paper run for me. 500 odd newspapers delivered by hand every week (except for the ones that fell out of my bag and into the odd drain). I think the hourly rate was around the $2 mark. It was a good plan that taught me some very valuable lessons about responsibility. 

The Wheel of Pain. More effective than a Paper Run but difficult to find in 1979

It also taught my parents some lessons about the employment of small children to deliver newspapers weighing in total many times the weight of the child. Namely, someone had to drive around and drop off all the newspapers so the child could deliver them. And that person was them.

So after a period thought long enough to properly embed in my brain the lesson that unlocked bicycles will very quickly get nicked, my parents altered the plan slightly from ‘Work until you have the money for the bike you carelessly lost’ to ‘Work to earn an amount of money equal to the amount of money you have earnt as of the time we get sick of carting your papers around. I hope you have learnt your lesson and here is your new bike.....Don’t. Lose. It.’

NEXT: Settle on. I’m thinking....