Bicycle Chain

This isn't the first time the thing has fallen off.

"Hang on a sec," The scrawny, brown-haired boy says, his embarrassingly thick Georgia accent unrestrained for a moment. 

The kids riding their bicycles with him roll their eyes, annoyed at having to stop again. None of them have the logical thought that if they didn't ride over so many rocks, their bikes' drive chains might stay on their sprockets a little longer. 

Kids don't think about those sorts of things. It isn't fun, so it doesn't exist. Call it concept permanence: the terrible thing adults acquire that ultimately ends a childhood.

The boy squeezes his brake handles, coming to a quick stop. Without a conscious thought, he flips the bike onto its seat and handlebars and begins to pull the chain forward, careful not to catch his small fingers in the front sprocket's teeth.

And then, a curious thing happens that transforms the world around him.

It’s another blazing summer in central Georgia. In the humid heat, the mosquitos come out to feast. The boy, normally terrified of stinging and biting insects, is oblivious as a bee hovers less than an inch from his sweaty neck.

The sun itself, always unbearable in high July, doesn't even enter his mind, even as it pinkens his skin. His left hand becomes superhuman, defeating the heat with a mere swipe across his forehead.

Even the debilitating ripples of puppy love for the redheaded girl who rides with them, can't distract him from the task he knows so well.

He knows the woods await them all. Just off the road, a short footpath next to a tiny stream has been turned into an epic enduro course by the neighborhood kids. If they go fast enough on their inexpensive mountain bikes, they'll soar through the air as they crest the hill just past the entrance. Then, they'll stand on their pedals, deftly maneuvering through hairpin turns filled with thick roots that will shake them like a bull if they don't hang on tight enough.

Of course, the launching hill is barely a speed bump. The thick roots are just rotted kindling they were too lazy to sweep off the path. The hairpin turns are hardly curves at all, and the whole path isn't even a tenth of a mile long.

But there is an epic thing happening here. Though the boy doesn't know it, he's taken a tiny step towards manhood. Not because there is anything incredibly masculine about the simple realignment of a bicycle chain, nor in the adventure he'll embark on after the work is done. Not that anything he has done would have been too much for the opposite gender. 

Such a simple, miniscule thing at first glance. It isn't that difficult to fix a bicycle chain; were the boy to think about his mindless task, he'd shrug and tell you as such. There was a problem, but he knew how to fix it. So, he fixed it.

The miracle was the understanding. This gear turns that gear when the chain loops around both. This gear turns when his feet complete a cycle. That gear turns the wheel. Break the chain - not literally, he hopes - and the bicycle won't move. He doesn't even know that he knows the whole of this system. He isn't aware of the little model he has in his mind of how the bike should be. He doesn't feel his mind performing the act of comparison, diagnosing the loose chain and preparing its remedy in a moment.

"Hurry up!" One of the boy's friends shouts.

With a few quiet clinks, the chain falls into place, and the rear wheel spins as the boy rotates the pedals. He spins them faster, indulging his surge of satisfaction at another job well done. He's sure he could do this in his sleep, and he's proud of that.

It'll take him decades to understand what's happened here. It won't be until he has kids of his own that he appreciates the gravitas of that afternoon long ago. He won't remember what they did on those dirt trails; those escapades were always thrilling, but always the same, like a roller coaster.

When he watches his kids have their own moments of culmination, he'll smile and look on in awe as they conquer their disasters. He'll laugh and clap and celebrate as years of imparted knowledge yields not a helpless, adorable infant, nor an entertaining, chaotic toddler, but a snapshot of who they will become. He'll see the moment when they look at a problem that would have spelled the end of the good times, then shrug, laugh, and overcome.

Because he didn't just fix a bicycle chain that day. He became bigger than the problem that faced him, and then he went on.