The writing space 3

​Today we were learning parallel writing and the prompt was to write about a hobby or a “hobbessesion”. I decided to ride about biking.

Biking

At age 7, my mom bought me my first bike. I was forced to ride it home on my own even though i didn’t know how to balance it, and my mom kept supporting my bike. The moment she let go of the bike, id fall down immediately and get a bruise somewhere. Within those two kilometers of my life, I had at least 10 bruises all over my body and I have never been so badly injured on a vehicle since that bike ride. In the last 50 meters to get home, I finally succeeded in riding it.

Then came my freedom. I could ride the bike anywhere as long as I could remember the route without any adult. It was a life-changing tool for me because it meant that I was independent. If I wanted to go to a park or go to a candy store, I could just hop on my bike and go there myself, without waiting for the adults to finish whatever work they were doing. I was completely free and the geography I could explore was expansive. I learned to how to ask strangers for directions and make a judgment on whether I was safe or not. The taste of independence and freedom became addictive to me.

One day, at about age 9, one of my cousins, who was 5 years older than I was, invited me to ride the bike to the park with her, which was about 5 kilometers away from home. We first had some fun at the park, but the big crowd and loud noises overwhelmed me so I wanted to go home, but she refused. She told me she hadn’t had enough fun yet and if I wanted to go home then I could go home on my own. It terrified me because that was my first bike trip to the park and it was guided by my cousin. I wasn’t exactly sure about the way home, but because my sensory overload made me want to get out of there, I said to her, “OK, I’ll go home on my own.”

I used my vague memory of the buildings that I saw on my path to the park to put together the route home, but it was not very clear. I was nervous and scared, sometimes thinking maybe I wouldn’t be able to make it back home. At one intersection, I finally decided that I was completely lost, and I decided to ask someone for help. This man didn’t seem like a trustworthy person; he was the kind of man my parents would tell me to stay away from—chewing betel nuts so that his mouth was full of the red juice that looked almost like blood, broken teeth, wearing a tank top, middle-age. My fear was that if I let him know that I was a little girl who had lost directions in the city, without anyone accompanying me, he might take advantage of me, but he was the only human I could find at that intersection so I had no choice. Fortunately, my mom had my hair cut really short at that time so most adults mistook me for a boy anyway. I decided to fake a boy’s voice and asked, “sir, which direction is the way to Victory Road?” I had a serious look on my face, without any smile, and he gave me the direction. I thanked him and left quickly.

To my surprise, he did give me the correct direction and I arrived at home safely. That day I had realized, sometimes the most terrifying things and people aren’t so bad after all; the things that people try to threaten me with aren’t that scary after all.