My far too bright for her own good sometimes and when she came home from school the other day and announced to me that she wanted a tandem bike, I made a mistake. I asked her if she knew what it was and she said yes, it was a bike that mommy and she could ride on together. She liked the idea, after all – she knows I love to ride on my recumbent stationary bike and she loves to ride her bike – so why shouldn’t we do it together?
Where’s the Mistake?
I didn’t want to tell her no right off and I am not entirely certain about saying yes to the idea. First and foremost, I have no idea how much a tandem bike costs. I know it’s not doable at the moment, still – the idea is full of intriguing possibilities. So I told my daughter I would think about it and that answer satisfied her.
I’m fortunate, my daughter believes me when I say I am going to think about something because I say yes as often as no after I’ve given contemplation to an idea. So the kicker for all of this happened this morning while I was on the treadmill and trying to get in my 35 minute brisk walk.
My daughter marches into the bedroom and bounces up onto our bed to watch me walking and asks, quite politely, have I finished thinking about the tandem? My husband asked her what tandem and then she launched into a fairly convoluted though mostly accurate description of our conversation the day before.
She finished it off with a flourishing: what do you think? My husband chuckled and said he thought it was a great idea. Beaming with triumph, my daughter looked at me as though to say: see, Daddy agrees with me!
Maybe
I like the idea of the tandem. I think it could be a great deal of fun for my daughter and I. We’d get to go riding together and when her legs got too tired, she could still ride along and let me do all the work. I know she adores that idea – still – I wonder what a tandem costs and whether or not we can convince Santa to bring us one.
What do you think of a tandem bike?