Wheel of Fortune

My friend Susan had a unicycle when I was in 6th grade, and I thought she was amazing.  SWS and I really wanted unicycles so we could be as cool and athletic as Susan, wheeling up and down her street balanced on her one wheel.  I somehow got an adult with a driver's license to take me to The Bike Shop downtown, where I made the disappointing discovery that a unicycle cost $60.00.  For a contraption with one wheel!  I made 25 cents an hour babysitting, so theoretically, I could save up enough money for a unicycle in about ten years, but I didn't want to be a circus freak when I was old and grey.  I wanted to be a circus freak immediately!

So I asked for a unicycle for my birthday, feeling guilty about the exorbitant cost, but still hoping my parents would take pity on me.  Time was slipping away, and I still wasn't cool or talented like I would be if I had a unicycle.  The night of my birthday, my dad came home from work and pulled his car in the garage.  I spied on him as he got out.  He wasn't carrying any unicycle-shaped packages, and my heart plummeted.  I watched my dad with an eagle eye all evening, until finally, he slipped back out to the garage.  I peeked and saw him wrestling with a roll of wrapping paper and a big cardboard box in the trunk of his car. 

When the time came to open the big box, I acted very surprised.  It felt like the best day of my life.

I loved that unicycle.  Sarah got one too, and we worked on our skills for hours.  I would start at the corner of the garage and balance ever-so-carefully.  I'd shove off, pedal once and fall down.  Over.  And over.  Susan coached us, but I never became the unicycle child prodigy that I had envisioned.  My dad kept telling people that I rode the unicycle, though.  He said it with pride, just like he said everything that related to his children.  That was the one thing my dad was never very good at:  recognizing his kids' failures.  Just like I couldn't ever get up on that single wheel, my dad could never tell when I was a miserable failure.  Couldn't tell, or just didn't let on.  Still doesn't.

Thanks, Dad!  And Happy Birthday.