I Learned to Ride a Bike a Little Too Late

When I was 7 years old, my mom and I would have study sessions on the balcony. With my tiny hands, I held papers printed with long tables containing the base form, present tense, past tense, and past participle of regular and irregular verbs in the English language. With my Russel-like figure and my overwhelmingly high-pitched voice, I took whatever challenge my mom threw at me. Because my brother’s fun was different. I saw him with our cousins passing so swiftly by the balcony, riding their bikes with bright faces, hyperactive lungs due to laughter that filled the air, and pedaling for hours on end until the sunset and their moms called them to call it a day. I wondered what it felt like to put my whole weight in the invisible hands of balance, to fly with my feet off the ground, to feel the air smashing my face, and to see the world in flashes and blurs. My father should’ve bought me my own green bike with training wheels and Ben 10 aesthetic (a childhood favorite), but his pay as a policeman in a small province of a third-world country couldn’t afford anything other than what was only needed to survive. <a href="https://medium.com/@keon.agustin/i-learned-to-ride-a-bike-a-little-too-late-ae902b6a05d">Read More</a>