An Ode To My Big Wheel...

We all have dark days..

But nothing compares to the spiritual death that I felt,

That day when my father

Ran over my Big Wheel...

You cannot understand how  the sound of plastic scrunching under a 2 ton vehicle tears into the soul of a 4 year old...

Now this was back in 1974

And I was in love with that vehicle,

It was red, blue, and yellow

With the tassels comin' out the handle

With the hand brake that if you pulled just right, you could do a cool-ass skid

Like that kid did in the commercial,

See, those were the days now call "back-in-the-day"

Days we reminisce over – wishing they never went away

The average yearly income was 14 thousand 
And a gallon of gas was only 55 cents.

That same year,, 55 became the nation’s speed limit

Those days, we played outside gone all day,

Long before white  vans, gangs and ricochets,

Took all the fun away…

Now, granted- real stuff was going on,

We had Watergate, Nixon, the OPEC crises...

And high ass gas prices-

That had Mama  driving clear across town 

To wait in long ass lines

But us kids were oblivious

Because those were the days of Saturday morning cartoons, like

•Hong Kong Phooey

•Fat Albert and the gang

•Super friends- before they added those wonder twins

•Land of the Lost (not that BS remake)

•Scooby Doo

•The Jetsons

•Pink Panther

Thundarr  the Barbarian - with Scmoo

•Speed Buggy

°Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes

And don’t forget:

The Electric Company

And School House Rock

WE still remember joints like: "I'm Just a Bill (sitting here on Capitol Hill) and,

Conjunction junction…(What's your Function?)

Yeah...

And at night 

When we could stay up late,

We'd watch Isis, Shazam  

Wonder Woman, and the

Six Million Dollar Man

And the next day,

We’d pretend we were bionic, running and jumping in slow motion

These were the days before virtual reality became sorta real –

When Atari came out with it’s first game, Pong...

Remember?

It was just 2 lines and a square and we all thought those graphics were the future

Those days, we lived outside...

And we would ride...

We’d grab our parent’s disco jackets and hop on our big wheels

Rolling out like Easy Rider... 

And We would pedal and pedal and pedal and pedal ...

Because Big wheels ran on pure people power 

And I’d try to hit the brake to wipe out

BUT I NEVER COULD SKID LIKE THAT KID ON TV

I would pull on the brake and just...

Stop.

And one day – in my haste to run inside to get a some Tang...

I parked my big wheel behind my Dad's car

Trying to keep my ride in the shade

And for whatever reason Allah decided to squash my heart in his Hands, inspiring  my Pops to run some insignificant errand – and

My hopes and dreams were soon dismantled as my big wheel lay mangled,

Torn and Broken.

Destroyed Beyond repair...

And I never did get a replacement,

And soon I graduated

To a Huffy...

But over the years, I could still feel the taste of that loss in the back of my throat

And when I grew up and got kids and bills

I bought myself a 1974 Plymouth Duster...

I named her Roberta,

She was all muscle and metal, rough around the edges
Fast and loud as hell

I named her Roberta
and she would always set of all the car alarms when I drove thru parking garages

And with the same frustration of that big wheel-

I couldn't ever manage to peel out or make my tires squeel...

But one day -

As I was speeding down 26th Avenue between Colorado and York 

Back when it was  a quarter mile straightaway,  so i was ZOOMING

And I came to the intersection way too fast

And saw a bus coming down York ..

Slammed on my breaks to avoid the collision course...

And skidded into a 360 degree circle 

And when I

Stopped...

. ...I sat at the intersection perfectly.

The passengers on the bus clapped and cheered  as they drove by

And I sat there scared to death – heart thumping in my chest
We

Then, suddenly, the memory of my childhood tragedy came back to me in a flood 
And I began to beat my dashboard with glee

You see, I was finally free...

I could finally heal from losing my big wheel:

Because I FINALLY DID THAT MUTH-*%$#@-ing SKID -

AND IT WAS WAY BETTER THAN WHAT THAT KID DID ON TV!!!!!!