xix

“What am I doin’? What am I doin’? Oh, yeah, that’s right, I’m doin’ me. I’m doin’ me. I’m livin’ life right now, mayne.”

-The Artist Formerly Known as Wheelchair Jimmy

            For the first time since I have been riding it this summer, I refilled my bike tires with the hissing, artificially-pressured air from my father’s trapped garage pump this morning. Until that moment, when the dusty gauge’s needle plummeted to the red wedge, I hadn’t noticed the cushioned pockets of diminishing distance between me, the plastic-metal-polycarbonate frame, and the Texas-deep-fried cement. Looking back, the increasingly heavy pedalforce which I had attributed to my khakied flabby thighs had instead been caused by low tire pressure, as I pantingly riding up gum-separted blocks on a twice-daily basis.

            So now I’m cruising uphill next to the neighborhood trimmed ficuses, the hired landscapers glancing sweatily behind their checkered bandanas at the red, non-helmeted blur who now, finally, is free to pedal without the restraints of not having enough.

            We’re driving across several state lines tomorrow morning, so I am racing home on these newly-air-christened wheels to sloppily pack two floral bathing suits and a high school t-shirt for an unnecessary, unwelcome trip to Arkansas.

Family vacations are unnecessary and unwelcome because every time I go out of town, it seems like the best social events seem to pop up on absentee days, events seemingly planned weeks and years in advanced for my anticipated metroplex departure. Coffee-house-gigs and camp-outs are being cycled through in the city while I put together graduation gifts in the sunless Hot Springs three-bedroom condo Hot Springs.

The aforementioned graduation gifts for my friends have come to a total of $32.57 out of pocket, which isn’t so bad for the highly-selective shortlist of twenty-some-odd-cheep-plastic-frame-recipients. And the few who will not be receiving a three-tiered photo frame will be forgotten (or strongly, vehemently remembered, however they wish to see it) for one of three reasons:

1)   I dislike them.

2)   We do not appear in three photos together.

3)   Wal-Mart ran out of two-dollar frames.

It is probably the first but choose to believe the other two if you wish.

Sorry.

But high school, whether I like it or not, has been the single most formative experience of my already-world-weary existence. And I continue to repeat myself.

One of my high school English teaches once said to me that I consistently write about the same things: not getting the girl, leaving the familiar, biking, dust. But until someone tells me otherwise, until someone tells me that I need new air in my tires, I’m going to keep doing what I know how to do, how to write, how to bike, how to make graduation present frames, how to love, how to stop love, how to live.