Photo a Week: Something New

Nancy Merrill’s Photo a Week Challenge: Something New

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO (OR MORE) OF SOMETHING NEW.

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When a kid gets a new bike…if that kid is fortunate enough to get one…it is an exciting day. Exciting enough to document with a photo.

At least it was at our house.

When my daughter was five, she was so done with her Strawberry Shortcake tricycle. She was usually “done with” things like that far sooner than we thought she would be. In her mind, she was always ready for the next thing.

She helped pick out her new purple bike, complete with a bell similar to one I had when I was little.  We insisted on a helmet, which she was too young to protest. This was 1987 and children did not commonly wear bicycle helmets yet. She was the first one on the block to be seen with one.

The neighbors commented that we were overprotective. I did not care what the neighbors thought. Protecting her head when she (inevitably) fell off was uppermost in my mind.

It wouldn’t be the first – or last – time she heard me say I don’t care what the other mothers do/say/think.

Regardless, she was one mighty proud five year old with her new “big girl bike.” Training wheels and all.

Her younger brother, on the other hand, graduated from a tricycle to his sister’s hand-me-down purple bike with training wheels. A bit banged up by then – 6 years later – but it still transported him around the driveway. Carefully up and down the street. And he didn’t seem to mind riding it. When you are not the first born, you often don’t get “something new” right away. If at all.

However, when my son outgrew his big sister’s bike, it was time for a new one of his own. Which he helped choose at the same local bicycle shop where we had gotten his sister’s bike before he was born.  By then a helmet was standard and seen on the heads of most of the neighborhood children. Thank goodness.

A mighty proud almost seven year old, he did not need those training wheels.

And off he went.