A Not So Tropical Christmas
December 21, 2012
The All Consuming Sports Fan
January 4, 2013
This essay relates to one of the all time great Christmas presents I got when I was in 6th grade. Fortunately, I’ve gotten a fat tire mountain version these days for off-road purposes.
Word Count: 916
Alternate Uses For
An Unused Pool Table
Sure seems like it happens every Christmas when you’re a kid? You get this great new toy that should probably only be used in an outdoor setting, but you can’t take advantage of all this vacation time to play with it. The new toy is just sitting there sadistically staring at you, but for one reason or another you can’t tinker around with its inner workings. Figuring out how the thing is designed to create maximum joy fulfillment is totally out of the question. Why? Specifically because we’re currently buried under these huge mountains of snow. Add to that the fact that it’s colder than the inside of walk-in freezer. It also seems like the days are as short as the attention span of a chronic channel surfer. So how does one go about solving a conundrum such as this?
Christmas 1970 presented me with just such a riddle. Santa (or more appropriately mom & dad for those of us who had stopped buying into the Madison Avenue myth) had just brought my sisters and I unicycles. One-wheeled wonders of locomotion that most people with even a modicum of balancing ability can learn to master. Given enough practice time and patience of course.
At first we attempted to get on the contraptions using the dining room table as a balancing apparatus. That avenue for learning how to use the new toy didn’t work. Due entirely to the fact that mom put a kibosh to it the minute we started mounting the unicycles and grabbing onto the furniture’s edge.
An uncle who came to Christmas dinner happened to be the manager of the local VFW bar. While witnessing the incident unfold, and wanting to maintain kid harmony he quickly suggested a novel solution. What if he allowed us to master operation of our one-wheeled contraptions in the back storage room of the bar? The area wasn’t being used at the time, and even if it was, all the adults present figured local drunks shouldn’t be frequenting a bar before 3:00 in the afternoon anyway.
Upon hearing this unbelievable tid bit of news, my sisters and I (along with my best friend whom I’d just called to announce the arrival of the unicycles) got more excited than if we’d just discovered ourselves trapped in the local Toys-R-Us store.
The very next day we visited our uncle as he arrived at the bar to prepare for its opening and scouted out our potential new training site. Initial impressions were very favorable. Besides lots of space to master the skill, there was an unused pool table at the back of the room. This as it turned out was a great learning tool and a ready made balancing prop around the edges for getting on the unicycles.
The entire month of January and into February then turned into a predictable pattern of behavior for us. Attend school from 8:00 till 3:00 amidst the constant distraction of wanting time to fly. Thus allowing us to finish our last class and go practice riding our new one-wheel wonders. Rush home at 3:01 pm in order to change clothes and put on tennis shoes (something you normally wouldn’t consider doing till May in a normal year). Spend the remainder of the daylight hours riding in circles from one end of that pool table to the other. Then in the evenings doing homework and cursing the fact that there were patrons at the bar. Don’t these drunks realize their presence at the Legion isn’t allowing us the precious time to hone our skills?
Through lots of practice one sister, my best friend, and myself got better at it. I distinctly remember the first time I rode my unicycle from one corner of the storage room to the other. Experiencing a level of excitement (at least for me) similar in scope to the first time the news media announced that King Tut’s tomb had been opened to the general public.
My other three sisters gave up on learning to ride the unicycles as a result of a combination of factors. Boredom, lack of motivation, maybe the fact that the youngest one was only six years old at the time. For the older two it was probably a stronger desire to play with their new Barbie doll accessories instead.
Whatever it was, things started to pay off for those of us that stuck it out and kept practicing. Springtime rolled around like it always does here in the San Juans around mid-April, and we ventured out into public on a sunny day. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress and that was followed the very next day by more late season snow, wind, and hale. Another week of honing our skills riding around in that storage room subsequently followed.
Eventually we did go outdoors. It almost looked like we’d turned into masters of the instruments too. Rode down main street and excitement got the better of me. This resulted in a face plant that rivaled the biggest yard sale I ever had on my skiis. Luckily very few members of the general public saw that first mishap take place. Instead they witnessed me triumphantly wheeling down the street like a circus clown attempting to impress his date. I’m sure some of them stared at us like we’d just walked a tight rope across the Grand Canyon. For a twelve-year-old kid it sure felt that way too.
