Thoughtful - Some Things Are Not All That Funny

The other day I dropped off my son’s little bike at the church rummage sale.

This is the little bike with special knurled steel pegs sticking out of the front axle, pegs my son could stand on so he could, for reasons obvious only to him, bounce and pirouette the bike on its front wheel.

This is the little bike that had no kickstand, and no fenders, and no trim of any kind, because these things would add weight, and weight is to be avoided at all costs when the whole idea of a little bike is to defy the laws of physics.

I have a ring that just turned thirty years old.

Thirty years.

I can remember being about seventeen and thinking that I was not real sure I even wanted to live for thirty years. I mean, think about it – thirty! How could person that old have anything left to live for?

It’s a simple gold ring, kind of medium-wide, with a pattern of leaves inscribed around it. Some of the detail in the leaves has worn away, ground down by thirty years of duty on a hand that held wrenches, and cameras, and cobbler’s nails, and ski ropes, and power saws, and guitars, and maybe an occasional beer bottle. A hand that typed hundreds of thousands of words on a portable typewriter, and later on a computer keyboard.