Dad Up! by Steve Patterson

Author:Steve Patterson [Patterson, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Now fast-forward a good forty years.

Four-year-old Scarlett was enrolled in Pedalheads summer camp to learn how to ride a bike. Of course, I protested to Nancy that I should be the one to teach her and carry on the proud Patterson family tradition. Then I remembered my dad’s lessons and I thought, “Well, a focused bike-riding camp couldn’t hurt. At least not as much as being thrown clear after hurtling down a steep hill.” So off to Pedalheads, Scarlett and I went.

The camp’s goal was ambitious but fair: get each kid to ride his or her bike, without training wheels, within a week.

I was excited for Scarlett. Most kids her age in the neighbourhood seemed to pedal around with their training wheels for weeks or months, which is a problem because once you get used to the extra support of training wheels, it takes longer to develop the balance required for riding on two wheels. Also, the course was taught by young men and women in their late teens and early twenties who were probably more patient than I would have been. And they were definitely better suited to the back-bending agility that bike-riding instruction requires (no wonder my dad let me go at the top of that hill).

All Scarlett needed now was a bike!

We had a small used bike that some friends had given us, and Scarlett had been out on it, with training wheels attached, a few times. But biking camp was a milestone, so I decided she should mark the occasion with a new bike of her own choosing. It was also an opportunity to teach her a lesson in financial responsibility, so Scarlett bought the bike herself with funds she had accumulated from birthday presents, profits from a lemonade stand and the proceeds of returning Daddy’s empty beer bottles. It’s not important which source provided the most revenue. The point is that Scarlett had saved up enough to buy a new bike and a new helmet. She was proud of her purchases and more than ready to learn how to ride!

So off to Pedalheads we went. Or I guess I should say she went. That was the first time I realized that sometimes my little girl wasn’t going to need me around. When I dropped her off at the schoolground, where a bunch of kids she didn’t know were wheeling around (along with her best friend, Tegan, which certainly made things easier), not only didn’t she linger around for a hug of reassurance, but she looked back at me with a puzzled expression and said, “Daddy, why are you STILL here?”

Reminder that Scarlett was four years old at this point. Not fourteen.

I skulked away from the camp thinking, “Well, at least she hasn’t started dating yet,” and hoping she would do okay with her teenage instructor, Emma. But when I returned in the afternoon to pick her up, she looked crestfallen.

“What’s wrong, Scar Scar?” I asked.

“Emma says my bike is too big,” she replied, not quite crying but not quite not crying either.

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