It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life Read Online Free PDF

to my room and pulled my copy of The Guinness Book of World Records off the shelf. I
    got a pair of scissors, and hollowed out the center of the book. I crammed the pages into the hollow and stuck the book back on the shelf. I wanted to keep the pages, and I’m not quite sure
    why. For insurance, maybe; a little ammunition, in case I ever needed it. In case Terry decided to use the paddle again.
    If I hadn’t liked Terry before, from then on, I felt nothing for him. I didn’t respect him, and I began to challenge his authority.
    Let me sum up my turbulent youth. When I was a boy, I invented a game called fireball, which entailed soaking a tennis ball in kerosene, lighting it on fire, and playing catch with it wearing a
    pair of garden gloves.
    I’d fill a plastic dish-tub full of gasoline, and then I’d empty a can of tennis balls into the tub and let them float there. I’d fish one out and hold a match to it, and my best friend Steve Lewis and I
    would throw the blazing ball back and forth until our gloves smoked. Imagine it, two boys standing in a field in a hot Texas breeze, pitching flames at each other. Sometimes the gardening
    gloves would catch on fire, and we’d flap them against our jeans, until embers flew into the air around our heads, like fireflies.
    Once, I accidentally threw the ball up onto the roof. Some shingles caught fire, and I had to scramble up there and stamp out the fire before it burned down the whole house and then
    started on the neighbors’ place. Then there was the time a tennis ball landed squarely in the middle ot the tray full of gas, and the whole works exploded. It went up, a wall of flame and a
    swirling tower of black smoke. I panicked and kicked over the tub, trying to put the fire out. Instead, the tub started melting down into the ground, like something out of The China
    Syndrome.
    A lot of my behavior had to do with knowing that my mother wasn’t happy; I couldn’t understand why she would stay with Terry when they seemed so miserable. But being with him
    probably seemed better to her than raising a son on her own and living on one paycheck.
    A few months after the trip to San Antonio, the marriage finally fell apart. One evening I was going to be late for dinner, so I called my mother. She said, “Son, you need to come home.”
    “What’s wrong?” I said.
    “I need to talk to you.”
    I got on my bike and rode home, and when I got there, she was sitting in the living room.
    “I told Terry to leave,” she said. “I’m going to file for divorce.”
    I was beyond relieved, and I didn’t bother to hide it. In fact, I was downright joyful. “This is great,” I said, beaming.
    “But, son,” she said, “I don’t want you to give me any problems. I can’t handle that right now. Please, just don’t give me any problems.”
    “All right,” I said. “I promise.”
    I waited a few weeks to say anything more about it. But then one day when we were sitting around in the kitchen, out of the blue, I said to my mother, “That guy was no good.” I didn’t tell
    her about the letters–she was unhappy enough. But years later, when she was cleaning, she found them. She wasn’t surprised.
    For a while, Terry tried to stay in touch with me by sending birthday cards and things like that. He would send an envelope with a hundred one-dollar bills in it. I’d take it to my mother and
    say, “Would you please send this back to him? I don’t want it.” Finally, I wrote him a letter telling him that if I could, I would change my name. I didn’t feel I had a relationship with him, or
    with his family.
    After the breakup, my mother and I grew much closer. I think she had been unhappy for a while, and when people are unhappy, they’re not themselves. She changed once she got divorced. She
    was more relaxed, as if she had been under some pressure and now it was gone. Of course, she was under another kind of pressure as a single woman again, trying to support both of us,