Sometimes in this magical world we discover the most astonishing connections, and if you ride a bike I’m sure you have a story to share of how that inanimate collection of frame, wheels, tires and cables has seemingly come to life in some bizarre manner.
In my first year of substitute teaching, that mystical force of bikes cast its spell on a troubled kid by the name of Justin.
The first time I subbed for Justin’s class, he wasn’t around. He had been suspended for something that was, of course, his fault because he did it, but not his fault because he didn’t start it. He just reacted to it.
The next time around with the class, I got a heads-up that Justin was back. He’s big for a fifth grader, which immediately put all the teachers on high anxiety levels. He also appeared to have a problem listening to women. In that school there were three male teachers. So they liked being able to call me in, too.
I didn’t seem to be having any problems with Justin in the morning. They told me some of his background. His mother is in prison. No one ever mentioned anything about a father. He lives with his grandparents. His grandmother is bound to a wheelchair, and his grandfather works in a factory. There’s a lot of yelling between those two. Loud confrontations are daily fare for Justin. He doesn’t react well to yelling.
In any event, things were going just fine. Then we had to begin musical chairs. Each fifth grade teacher specializes in either Social Studies, English or Science. The teachers rotate from class to class. While I was teaching English in the other classrooms, Justin got into it with the other two teachers. By the time we rotated back, he was gone. In the office.
I went and had a little chat with him, calming him down. He eventually came back to class. Just in time for the class to work on an essay. It had to be a “How To” essay. Everyone dug in. Even Justin.
Justin was into it big time. He proudly brought his essay up to me. “How to … build a bike.”
“Yeah, I built my own bike,” he said. “It isn’t as hard as it looks. Is it OK to use drawings, too?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “The important thing, whether it’s drawings or words, is that someone could actually follow your directions and build the bike.”
He looked at me deeply, nodded, went back to his desk and worked feverishly. A couple of the other kids in the class took notice, watching him head back to his desk, and shook their heads in disbelief. He wasn’t combative. He was being a student.
Of course, my mind was doing cartwheels. Bikes? Bikes! This was just too good to be true. When he handed in his essay, I read it over. It was rough, for sure, but potential was there. This isn’t a dumb kid. Just a frustrated kid.
“You know what I did before I became a substitute?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“I was the editor of a magazine that covered bicycle racing.”
His eyes popped out of his head.
“You wrote things about bikes?” he asked.
“Yep. We ran a lot of stories, just like this.”
I saw a twinkle in his eye and felt as though a young Lennard Zinn stood before me.
Let me see if I have a book on bicycle repair at home that you might be interested in, I said.
When I picked the class up from lunch about an hour later, Justin was no longer with us. Back to the office. On his way home. Suspended again.
I had the class the next day, and left a book on bicycle repair on his desk. It sat there the next day, too. Eventually he came back. I was subbing for another teacher when he grabbed me in the hall.
“Hey, you have any other books like that?” he asked.
I’ll check at home, I said. Then I engaged him.
You think you’d like to work on bikes? Or maybe write about them?
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
See, there’s a lot involved with something like that, I said. To know how to make a frame just right, or how to get the wheels to turn perfectly, you need to know a lot of math. Math and science. That’s how all machines work. You tinker with other stuff?
“I took my papaw’s radio apart once and put it back together,” he said, again, beaming with pride for a moment, “until he whupped me fer messin’ with his stuff.”
We got into his suspension. Again, someone started something to set him off. He couldn’t control himself.
“When I get mad, I just snap, there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said, as if he had already come to peace with the fact that his life would be out of control forever.
Listen, Justin, everyone can control their anger.
“Not me,” he said.
Oh yes, you. Everyone. It isn’t easy for anyone, really. It takes a lot of work. If you control your anger, your life is going to be a lot easier. You won’t have all these problems with people, being sent to the office, and suspended.
“It ain’t my fault,” he said.
Well, yes, it is your fault. You have to work on controlling yourself. You’re a smart kid, Justin. Not everyone knows how to put a bike together. Everyone has their own strengths. And interests. If you don’t get control of yourself, you’ll never be able to use those strengths.
Eventually, I got Justin down to the bike shop to meet my friend Doc. He’s a first-class bike mechanic and runs the shop. Doc’s like a lot of guys who are in the back of bike shops these days. He has a degree in mechanical engineering. Highly educated guys who love to tinker with things.
Justin and Doc hit it off well. We were in the process of selling as much as we could in garage sales preparing for a move, so I took Justin back home and gave him a bunch of bike parts and accessories. A couple more bike books. I drove him back home, telling him that now that he met Doc, he can go down there anytime. It’s downtown Knoxville, about a 15-minute drive from Strawberry Plains.
“Naw, we never leave the house,” Justin said, “unless it’s real important.”
I’m pretty sure Justin made it on to sixth grade. I asked him about school and he said, “I’m going to start doing better in Middle School.”
Why’s that?
“It’ll be new stuff to learn, not the same old stuff all the time,” he said. “I know I can do it.”
I told him, yes, Justin, I know you can, to.
Time to ride
