Yesterday, Calvin asked me, as he was struggling in the heat, "Dad, why don't you ever make the girls bike with you?" Good question. Actually, I know sometimes I twist his arm a little because I want him to get out and exercise, but I never really thought of it as a forced march or anything. I guess that's my perspective. His may be different, especially on a hot day.
Nevertheless, today I insisted that Rose and Sabrina bike with me and I gave Calvin the day off. Rose resisted at first, but as usual she really enjoyed it once we got out there. I actually did have to force Sabrina to go against her will. But then again, anything you ask a 13-year-old girl to do will likely be against her will. It seemed fair. She needs exercise too occasionally. And it is not like either of them have to sweat much to ride 7mph on their full-size mountain bikes, unlike Calvin on his 20-inch wheels.
Until she decided to pay me back for making her go by complaining non-stop. Literally, non stop. I got to hear about her ill-fitting tennis shoes, her sore hip, her hands that are too sweaty to hold the handlebar, her shoelaces getting in the way, her water bottle tasting too "plastic-y", the weather being too hot, her sister riding to close to her, her sister having a nicer bike than she has, her sister going too far ahead and not riding close to us, and on and on.
After about 30 minutes of trying to block her out, and telling her every few minutes that I was tired of hearing it, I finally got so angry that I snapped. I actually yelled at her to shut up. I told her that sometimes in life she will find herself in a group doing something she doesn't want to do, and that fact does not give her the right to ruin the experience for everyone else in the group. I immediately felt terrible. I should not have let myself get that angry and yelled at her that harshly, I know, especially since it was partially my fault for bringing her in the first place.
On the other hand, it worked. She didn't complain again for the rest of the ride. Not even once. In fact, she actually started to appear to enjoy the ride after a while, though it is highly unlikely she would ever admit that. And though she did not follow her sister and take her bike for an extra gleeful spin up, down, and around the little dirt motocross course we passed near the bike trail, she did seem to have some fun.
All in all it ended up being a good 9.5 mile run on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, once we all got through the difficult "warm-up".
No comments:
Post a Comment