Breaking cycles. Including bicycles.
For anyone feeling socially awkward and physically inept (in life, or on a bicycle).
I had another post planned for today, but instead I find myself with something to say about cycle-breaking1. Of a literal and metaphorical kind.
As I begin to write this, my daughter is on her second day of ‘Bikeability’ with her Year 6 class. She will be out there somewhere, wobbling.
This is by way of a little prayer for her to have a better day than yesterday.
And, in voicing this, I am also saying a prayer for those of us who:
have felt deeply hurt but never shown it;
mask the effort it takes to hold all those raw edges together;
hate rough and tumble;
stumble on inept into sporting and social arenas;
sense they are on the outside looking in;
are left sitting on the bench.
In my world, prayer means calling on something bigger than myself, not necessarily God for anyone who feels excluded by this language. Prayer can mean what you want it to mean. A sincere asking. A heartfelt wish. A healing thought. An unspoken vulnerability. A private chat. A tiny offering. For me, it’s an acknowledgement that I can’t control everything. I can’t make it all alright. I can’t short circuit pain for my child. Instead, I look at the sky and say:
“Please let her be ok.
Please let her not wobble too much.
Please let the other kids be kind.”
A lucky black cat with a pretty pink bike. My fantasy vision of what a bicycle might be.
Photo by Concha Mayo on Unsplash
Where it all began
‘Bikeability’ is the modernised version of Cycling Proficiency2 that most folk in the UK will recall from their own school days. I remember the unforgiving surface of a grey concrete playground set up to mimic a road. Having to zigzag around orange plastic bollards. Not wanting to let go, but instructed to stick my arm out to indicate. Trying and failing to do an emergency stop. Losing my balance. Crashing into the bollards. Hot flush of embarrassment and the sting of suppressed tears as the other kids laughed. Oh how they laughed.
It was perhaps over optimistic to attend Cycling Proficiency because I had only recently learned to ride a bike. My mum and dad were not outdoorsy cycling sort of people. But I pestered them for a bike because I wanted to be part of the gang. I wanted to follow my friend Kerry as she freewheeled down the streets where we lived. She looked so confident, so cool, so free. It wasn’t so much the bike that I wanted. It was the swagger, the sass, the independence. Everything my own two wheels represented. The ability to get further away from my parents. The ability to fit in.
Mum clipped out an advert from the back of the Sunday supplement. A cheap enough bike. Made in Czechoslovakia. When Czechoslovakia still existed3. I don’t know if she realised that it would come in bits that would need to be bolted together. The box arrived and dad disappeared into the garage for what seemed like the whole weekend. There was a lot of muffled swearing. He emerged with a fully functional bicycle. But, and there is a large but, they had omitted to tell me that it was a fold up shopper bicycle. The kind beloved by old ladies with a blue rinse, people wearing sandals over white socks, and anyone valuing practicality over performance. It was not cool.
I was desperate for performance over practicality. Yet there I was, trapped in sensible shoes, cardigans buttoned up to keep out the cold, and easy care polyester trousers with an elasticated waistband. In a fatal design flaw for something made in the early 1980s, the flare of my polyester trouser kept catching on the handle that was meant to collapse the bike. So my deeply uncool Czechoslovakian folder up shopper bike had a disconcerting habit of folding up as I was riding it. The whole spectacle was excruciating.
April 1983. This is me on my bike, sensible shoes and all. Looks like my teeth were perfect before the accident.
My cycling dreams of freedom came to an end one afternoon. I had failed Cycling Proficiency so I could only ride on the pavement. There was a cul-de-sac just behind my house where some new houses had been built on the allotments. It was a steep drop down into the circle of driveways. Kerry sped off down the slope at high speed, executed a perfect sharp turn at the bottom, grinning. She beckoned for me to follow. It wasn’t sabotage. She must have thought it would be OK for me, her clumsy friend, as there was no through traffic. I was scared, but willing.
I started my descent. For one brief moment of suspended animation - the wind rushing through my hair, the dizzying speed, the sheer exhilaration - I felt elated. I was the Eddie the Eagle4 of the fold up shopper cyclist’s world, sticking two fingers up to the kids who had laughed at my ineptitude. Until I came a cropper. I was unable to apply the brakes gently but firmly enough and turn the handlebars to bring the bike around into a safe arc. I must have hit them too hard, or perhaps it was just that the bike wasn’t made for speed. I went flying over the top, and landed smack on the ground, skidding down the road in a starfish formation of chin, nose, elbows and knees. I put my hand up to my face. There was a lot of gravel and blood.
In my quest to be cool, I had managed to crack both my two front teeth, with one half broken off. This meant I had to have an NHS standard issue crown fitted5. It had a metal pin that was painfully visible. It was made of a semi porous material that was a magnet for food stains. I was doomed to spend my teenage years doing a funny smile so it wouldn’t show. The accident put paid to my cycling ambitions too. The bicycle was put back into the box in bits, and taken to the dump.
As a parent myself, I understand why my mum wanted to protect me from literal hurt. But there was no encouragement to dust myself off and try it again at any point. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I got back on a bicycle, and there’s another, longer cycle-breaking story to be told about that. All I know is that it was never mentioned, and the indelible imprint of my physical (and emotional) awkwardness has persisted long into adulthood. It was more than being unable to ride a bike. It underscored my sense of being unable to fit in. To my mind, I was always going to wear unfashionable clothes and have dodgy teeth.
How it’s going
Back to the present day and ‘Bikeability’ for my daughter. The name may have changed, but unfortunately the cruel taunts of other kids haven’t.
I could tell before she even spoke that it had not been a good experience. Eyes brimful with tears that only spilled in the privacy of home. Red faced, not wanting sympathy or attention, but not knowing quite what to do with these big feelings. Oh goodness, the recognition. I have been there so many times.
The desperate hurt plunged deep into your whole being by comments like:
“You haven’t learnt to ride a bike then”
“Don’t get stuck behind her, she’ll crash into you”
“Your bike looks stupid”
“You are as bad as your mum’s driving” (Apparently I was spotted running over a plastic bollard outside the school gate. A recurring motif in my life.)
And all the while, smiling, keeping it in, joking along with each fresh insult.
In situations like this, all I can do is be a big safe container for whatever needs to tumble out. I work to keep myself steady whilst simultaneously wanting to lash out at the kids concerned. I offer to intervene. She declines. I say that she doesn’t have to stick with it if she doesn’t want to. She does.
We have a quiet evening. We watch TV. No homework. Lots of cuddles.
I’ve written another similar post you can access below with 3 suggestions on how to support your sensitive child (and your sensitive self) through playground dramas. So I won’t repeat the points here, but do take a look if this resonates and you want to explore further.
How it turned out
Several pep talks later, and despite her tummy ache in the morning, my daughter decided to go in for day 2 of ‘Bikeability’.
The good news is that it wasn’t so bad. They went out on the road in a trail of fluorescent yellow tabards. I caught sight of them as I drove back from the town. I waved encouragingly at my daughter. She was at the back, but at least seemed to sport a genuine smile. The girl who had teased her yesterday was more concerned about not going into potholes than name calling. One of the outwardly confident boys teetered on the brink of falling off as he indicated to turn. My daughter found that the previous day’s practice had helped her to feel more confident with the bike, if not the social situation. She came home, glad it was over, but not distraught.
It’s not a perfect end to the story. Cycle-breaking is not a direct and easy process. To be honest, I don’t even like the language, although it makes for a neat play on words. I think we just create new cycles with a hope that they will spin in a more productive way. The skeletons of the old cycles remain, rusting, with odd sharp jagged edges that can catch you out sometimes.
There’s more to be done to support her confidence in this new skill, and in her ability to field unkind comments. There’s work I still need to do on that narrative that I will never possess physical grace and am hopelessly clumsy. Or worse, that I have to sit on the bench of life for fear of being caught out. But I do feel that my little prayer was answered. So here it is again, made universal for anyone struggling to fit in:
“Please let us be ok.
Please let us not wobble too much.
Please let people be kind.”
That’s all we can ask for really. That, and good teeth.
I’m thinking of us all gliding along gentle woodland paths, riding pretty pink bicycles through dappled shade, in my fantasy of future summer holidays.
Questions for exploration
(either in your journal, or here below if you feel called to comment or reply to this email - I’d love to hear from you!)
Have you felt parallels between what’s going on for your child and what went on for you as a child?
Does that make it harder or easier to handle?
How do you support yourself in moments like this?
Are there narratives about yourself persisting from childhood that you’d like to change?
As always, just a reminder that this Substack isn’t therapy or coaching. If this brings up stuff that is triggering for you or that you need to process further, please seek the support of qualified professional.
In case you are unfamiliar with the term, a cycle-breaker is somebody who sees an unhealthy cycle of behaviour in their family of origin (meaning the family they grew up in) and intentionally works to break that cycle (from Psychology Today).
The Cycling Proficiency Test was a test given by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. It served as a minimum recommended standard for cycling on British roads from 1947 onwards. It was superseded by the National Standards for Cycle Training, branded Bikeability, in England in 2007.
I was about 11 (the same age as my daughter is now) so this would be circa 1983 and Czechoslovakia was still one country. It split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992.
Eddie the Eagle was the sole British applicant for the 1988 Winter Olympics ski jumping competition, where he finished last. His tale is one of plucky endeavour in the face of ridicule, which I clearly identify with.
NHS - National Health Service here in the UK. The Commons Health Select Committee described the management of dentistry by the state as one of ‘supervised neglect’’ back in 2007. There was certainly neglect going on in my mouth back in the 1980s. The crown came off when I chewed on a Curly Wurly and the replacement was just as ugly as the original. When I left home and got a decent job I saved up for private dental work. I’ve not looked back!
This is such a gorgeous read Ali! You made me wince-smile about your awkward smile because of your crown.
I have a dear friend who kept telling me how happy he felt. How happy he was and how happy he felt in our relationship. Except he didn’t smile, hardly ever.
So I asked him finally why he said he was happy but didn’t show it through smiling. It was all about his teeth. He loathed them. It was the first honest loving conversation he had with anyone about his mouth full of teeth. That week with my support he arranged to see a dentist with a view to sorting things, whatever that meant. He now smiles.
Thanks for sharing today.
Ps I was thinking about you, I’ll DM if you’ll accept that.
Ali, I had a biking accident around the same age, except I scrapped my face on the pavement leaving a huge gash on my forehead. You have my thinking now about the term cycle breaker, something I definitely identify as AND I am not sure it is the most accurate verbiage. Because the focus is more on me trying things differently with my son and less on what happen in the past. This is giving me lots to sit with, thank you for sharing!