'Totally Immobilized....TOTALLY!"

Okay, this has been 'true confessions week'. I have one more really embarrassing moment from my youthful days. Here it is...

The summer of 1957 was a great summer. I was 12, going on 13. After my paper route -- after supper -- I would often get on my bicycle and ride all over our neighborhood. After I wrecked my old balloon-tired bicycle showing off at school at an earlier time, I got a newer bike. It was maroon, and wasn't an antique. It wasn't expensive, either, but I loved that bike! I became so familiar with that machine, I felt like the bike and I were 'one'. It almost seemed like part of me. I polished that bike and adjusted the spokes and cleaned and oiled it, almost compulsively. I got it with some of my paper route money and unsanctioned candy sales at school, and I spent a lot of time on that bike, exploring my world.

One summer evening, I had been riding all over the neihborhood at breakneck speed, up and down the gently-sloped hills in and around our neighborhood, wearing nothing but a pair of long jeans and a t-shirt. I didn't want to go home -- not yet -- and still, I needed to stop for 30 seconds to relieve myself. If I go home, I thought, Mom will make me come inside for the evening --- take a bath and get ready for bed. So, I pulled into the alley behind our house, and without getting off of the bike, unzipped my jeans and took care of business off of the side of my bike. Then I hurriedly zipped up my jeans and --- OUCH!...I had managed to zip up 'Oscar' in the zipper of my jeans! That really hurt! I was frozen in pain, and yet, I knew I couldn't stay in the alley all night. I tried to free myself from the zipper. I tried and tried, to no avail. The pain was almost unbearable! Then it gradually got dark.

I decided to try to ease back up on the bicycle seat and carefully coast down the alley and around the corner back to our house. Big mistake! As I carefully eased back up onto the seat -- still in terrible pain -- I slowly put my right foot up onto the pedal to give it a tiny push. I pulled my shirt down over my open pants, and then started rolling down the alley toward the street. I no sooner began pedaling than I realized that the cuff on my 'high water' jeans had gotten caught in the sprocket of the bicycle! "OH, GREAT!", I thought. "Now I've done it! I'm stuck here in the alley. I can't pedal and I can't get off of the bike without tearing 'something vital.' " I couldn't move! I WAS TOTALLY IMMOBILIZED! TOTALLY!

I stood there quietly in the alley for a long, long time. I had a vivid imagination, and began to think of all sorts of 'outcomes'...none of them pleasant!

I had mental pictures of people driving down the alley, plowing into the 'paralyzed kid' on his bike! I thought that I might be there all night, until someone could see me the next day. Then I thought of my parents. They will think that I've run away from home when I don't come home tonight. They may call the neighbors or the police and I may be 'discovered' by people with very bright, utterly revealing flashlights! I'll be ruined at school, I thought. How can this be any worse? I know how it can be worse --- what if they have Sylvia Harrell and her Mom and Aunt join in the 'search' and Sylvia finds me? (Sylvia was a young girl from church who was, at that moment of my life, and for years thereafter, the love of my life, as the saying goes). She lived half a block from our home. I would rather have died than for Sylvia or her Mom and Dad to find me in that ridiculous, embarrassing situation in the alley!

Very late that evening, my Mom went outside our home, looking for me. None of the neighborhood kids had not seen me in hours. Mom and Dad were bound to be worried. I didn't know it at the time, but they had gone out looking for me. Dad went one direction and Mom went in another direction, talking with neighbors and calling my name. I heard Mom coming, and I responded with an answering 'yell'. I was both so glad to see her, and yet mortified to have to have my Mom, of all people, help me get 'free' so I could go home. How embarrassing! It took awhile, but eventually, both 'Oscar' and my jeans were free and I went home. Eventually I healed up and the humiliation subsided. Mom didn't tell anyone what happened and I didn't either, for many, many years.

I learned a lot from that episode...but the most important lessons I learned were:
Don't 'whiz' off of a bicycle, put the chain guard back on the bike...and never forget to remember ALL of the kindnesses of parents. They go through SO MUCH in trying to raise their kids!