This morning I pulled out of my driveway to head down the street to take Maggie to school, and at fist glance I saw my neighbor riding up the street on his bicycle. This was not unusual, he is usually out there finishing his morning bike ride when I leave to take Maggie to school. Today, something about the look on his face made me do a double take and then I saw, there on his shoulder, was a parrot. I started going on about it to Maggie, "There's a BIRD on his shoulder! hahaha, isn't that funny? That is hilarious." Maggie, who is about to turn 13 just looked at me condescendingly and says, "Mom, that is not funny, it's weird." I thought it was about the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, and then I remembered my own dad.
My dad always got some kind of regular exercise too. He jogged for a while, then his knees hurt, so he took up riding his bicycle, but the ten speed bike hurt his back bending over so far while riding. He then got the idea to put long upright handlebars of an old kids' bike onto the tall, skinny, sleek ten speed bike. It looked funny....not haha funny, but ODD funny.....embarrassing to preteen daughters type of funny. I was about Maggie's age at the time. These days, this would not be an odd sight, but in the '70's it was pretty weird. When I tried to inform him of this, he just laughed. He liked his invention, he was always improving things by fiddling around with them. There was no stopping him. My dad was a nerd. I just made peace with it, even as a preteen daughter. (and I tried to stay off of the street at bike riding time)
One day he decided to take our dog for a bike ride...our poodle. He wired a metal milk crate to the back of the ten speed bicycle and put a little cushion in it and put the poodle, Muffin, into the crate. Off they went, a spectacle on wheels! He liked it... Muffin that is, (yes, Muffin was a boy dog with an embarrassingly sissy name) so Dad would oblige him almost every day from then on with a bike ride, to the enjoyment of the whole neighborhood. He wasn't a spectacle to them, he just made them smile.
I only wish I had taken a picture, but I didn't want proof back then. Some things you are only fond of by way of memory. (especially when you're a preteen girl hiding in the basement while her dad takes the poodle on a ride through the neighborhood on an incredibly strange looking bicycle)
1 comment:
A few years ago there used to be a man who walked around our local shopping centre with a parrot on his shoulder. It was kind of weird yet cool at the same time.
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