Helmets may be uncomfortable to wear but going without them is just plain stupid. We know it’s true, but sometimes we need a painful reminder. The summer after fourth grade I got in the biggest bike wreck of my life, one that could have been much worse. It is a day that will not soon be forgotten by my parents, and certainly not by me. When I see people riding without a helmet or letting their kids go without them I tell them this story…

I can remember the day I finally succeeded, after many scraped knees and elbows, in staying up and gliding down the road on my rusty hand-me-down bike. After that I rode that it everywhere. It was my only pair of wheels for years. Imagine my surprise when my parents returned home after a trip to the store with a brand new beautiful blue mountain bike. Running out of the house, the screen door slamming behind me, I rushed out to claim my new beauty. My excitement was barely containable. I stood in awe before it, embracing it with my eyes. It was glorious. A masterpiece of design and welded metal painted a sleek beautiful blue and silver. Gears of eighteen speeds set between tires that smelled like fresh rubber. It was all mine.

I had to test it out. I mounted my bike; the smooth leather seat was already at my level. The grip of the handlebars sent a surge of power up my arms. Giving the pedals a turn, I coasted to the end of the driveway, checked for traffic and was about to launch when my mom, who was suddenly at my side, stopped me. She must have run to catch me. She had gotten my helmet from the garage and was holding it out to me. “Oh come on mom, I just want to test it out.” I began to protest. For a moment she seemed to surrender and was going to let me go but then she shook her head and insisted, “Just put it on.” Reluctantly, I did.

Then I was off, pedaling up the steep hill in front of our house. The freshly greased chain moving smoothly around the gears turned the wheels in an image of mechanical perfection. I barely registered the burning in my calves. I reached the top in record time, where I turned around plunged down the hill. I twisted the gears to maximum speed as I worked the pedals until there was no longer any resistance. I was flying. And coming in for a crash landing.

The trouble with going from an old worn out bike to a brand new one is that the breaks are not at all what you’re used to. While the old one required a powerful squeeze to slow it down, the new one needed a gentle grasp to achieve the same affect. Of course this didn’t occur to me at the time. So when I squeezed on the breaks of the new bike to slow it down in front of my house, the result was catastrophic.

In an instant the front wheel stopped while the rest of the bike kept going. The seat flew through the air, taking me with it. Up over the handlebars I went, the back wheel following close behind me. Mom, who was watching from the driveway, described the scene afterwards. My face was the first to hit the pavement. My torso and legs, still straddling the bike, were suspended above me, bending my neck back as my face dragged across the road. My legs came free of the bike as it continued to fly over me, landing on the rear wheel which twisted on impact. Time had stopped. I laid there in the street. No movement. No sound. A mother’s worst nightmare.

And then I started to move. My senses returned in a wave of pain throbbing from my head down to my ankles as I pushed my scraped palms against the ground, lifting my head up. The remnants of my shattered helmet hung from the strap under my chin. Parts of my legs, arms and hands were bloody and raw. Everything burned as I slowly got to my feet. By then mom had made it to the street. With my one open eye I registered the shock on her face as she looked at mine. I didn’t understand why until we got into the house and I looked in the bathroom mirror. What a mess. The skin on the bottom of my face – chin, cheeks, nose and lips – had been scraped off and replaced with bloody gravel. My mouth was full of blood and rocks. I looked like walking road kill, but I was alive.

            After I cleaned up and calmed down we checked out the damage. The back tire was a pretzel and the rubber around the handle bars was shredded. My beautiful new bike had taken a terrible beating on our first short voyage. But it was salvageable. My helmet on the other hand was completely destroyed. The hard plastic was covered in a web of cracks and missing in places. The Styrofoam underneath was split in several places. As we examined the damage we knew that it had saved my life.

When I was a kid my parents always had us wear helmets but I had never thought that it would save my life. And the one time it did, I almost didn’t wear it. If my mom hadn’t stopped me at the last minute to have me put it on despite my protests, I wouldn’t be writing this now.

Thank God for helmets…

And the parents who make us wear them.

 

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