Chapter Forty-Two: Lance Armstrong
In the last year of her life, Taylor heard a great deal about cyclist Lance Armstrong and surely his story was truly inspirational, especially for cancer patients. Lance overcame testicular cancer, resumed his career as a cyclist, and went on to become Tiger Woods on a bicycle, winning a number of the coveted Tour de France trophies. From chemo to primo, one might say, but recently he returned to the Tour de France, coming out of retirement and finishing third. Not bad, I thought, for a has-been, and reading the sports section I thought of Taylor, not as a cancer patient this time, but rather as a beginner on her bike, the day we took the training wheels off.
I was teaching at Martin County High School and living across the street from the school in a duplex in a divorced dad development known as Hideaway Place, a catchy name for a place that wasn’t such a hideaway, but rather a series of rentals for fathers who had visitation rights with their children. On weekends the street would be populated by an influx of kids, but by Monday they would be gone, along with a child support check, back to the bosom and the bank account of their mother.
For me, it was convenient, and one Saturday morning Courtney, Taylor and I with two bikes, walked across the main road to Martin County High School to the inside courtyard where I proposed to give little five-year-old Taylor her first lesson in driving under the influence of balance.
There was something reassuring for a little child in the training wheels on her bike. They seemed to aright the teetering of a tot in motion as she pedaled furiously down the driveway. This was a time before the obsession with children wearing helmets to ride their bikes. If a kid fell on his noggin, well, he fell on his noggin. In retrospect, it is amazing that anyone of my generation even survived childhood, having had lead pencils, no adult supervision at baseball games, no bike helmets, no seat belts, and a penchant for playing in the dirt. Every boy I knew in childhood was a clone of Pig Pen from Peanuts. But all of us, at one time or another, had had to cross the childhood threshold from training wheels to two wheeler, and I, for one, had a problem with the concept of brakes. As a child it made no sense to me that a cyclist had to suddenly pedal in the opposite direction if he wanted to stop. This, of course, was before the advent of ten speed bikes. I had a three speed Schwinn when I was a kid, and I thought I was the Cat’s Meow, as most of the guys had the conventional one speed bike, and so did Taylor on that fateful day in the courtyard at MCHS.
In something of a small ceremony with Courtney watching, I applied pliers to the training wheels and removed them from Taylor’s Strawberry Shortcake bicycle.
“There,” I said when completed. “A two wheeler.”
Taylor smiled, but I sensed apprehension behind the smile. I knew she was nervous, because she didn’t say anything; Taylor was a chatterbox.
Still, courageously she took a seat on the bike, her little legs holding the bike securely in place.
“I’m going to push you to get you started, Taylor.”
She nodded nervously.
Of course I was nervous, Pops, you forgot to tell me about the importance of the brakes.
You knew about brakes, Taylor.
Yes, but I was trying to maintain my balance and remembering brakes too was just too much for me to handle.
And you crashed into the glass door entrance to the courtyard.
It wasn’t glass on the door; it had glass panels on either side, kind of skinny actually.
And you managed to whack right into one of them and break it. I yelled to you to hit your brakes.
Pops, I was five years old. I was a klutz. What can I say? I was no Lance Armstrong. Remember what Tristan said about Lance Armstrong when we were getting our stem cells harvested at Duke and that nurse tried to use Lance Armstrong and his autobiography as an inspiration for us?
Yes, I do. He said. “Big deal. We go through a Tour’d France every day.” I liked that kid.
He had medulloblastoma, the brain tumor found in the base of your head by the brain stem. It had also spread to his spine. He had had it for thirteen months and had undergone chemo and radiation and two rounds of pheresis and was then doing more chemo. He was extremely good natured and courageous, and I admired him.
They once thought you might have had medulloblastoma.
Yes. Heck, they thought I had Glioblastoma too, the nasty stuff, but I think Tristan had an interesting take on the subject of Lance Armstrong. He said he thought Lance Armstrong got the best care possible because he was a celebrity. “What about average people?” I remember him asking asked the nurse. He had gone through a lot. He hadn’t written a best seller, but he was a gutsy guy. I liked his goatee but the Cleveland Indians cap was kind of lame.
I think Lance Armstrong would have liked Tristan.
Probably, Pops. Didn’t you get into a bit of trouble because of my bike accident, Pops? With Wanda Yarboro?
Wanda Yarboro was my principal then, and I was in her office Monday morning, telling her our story and offering to pay for a new glass panel. God bless her, may she rest in peace. She just laughed and said they would take the repairs out of the soda money receipts. They made money on the pop in the teacher’s lounge.
You know, Pops, after that little accident I never had a problem with brakes or balance again, except in gymnastics I guess.
And the two broken arms.
Oh, I forgot about those.
We removed the cast from the first broken arm and within a month you had broken your other arm. Fell off a bleacher?
Brain tumor, Pops. Probably the brain tumor. Even then, that brain tumor was already messing up my life.