With Regard to Acting Badly

I saw a woman in a waiting room breastfeeding today. This is another one of my strong beliefs: I believe in breastfeeding. I think it is essential and wonderful. I wanted to let this mom know, if only because I'm certain she's been shamed by other people. Turns out, our daughters were in kindergarten together. Small world! She says to me, "are you still riding your bike around everywhere?"

This is a fun game for me. People tell me stories about where they saw me. My friends are usually the suburban mom variety who drive minivans. I like this too. They're awesome people, for sure. But suburban moms like me are not the traditional bike commuter. It opens the dimensions of the conversation.

Except this reminder came with another memory. My daughter loves to torture me with it, so I'm a little less sensitive after some laughter about it. When she was in kindergarten, I regularly dropped my kids off at school, parked my car, and biked to work from there. I'd return at the end of the day, re-rack my bike, and hop in carpool. Oh man does the application of that word make me mad. There is no pooling of cars when it comes to delivering children to school.

In the first week, I swooped through carpool on my bike. I'm thinking I'm going to send some positive message and maybe start a conversation! (that's intentionally awkward excitement)

My daughter sees me and smiles. The vision in my head is the cargo bike in Africa. She's ridden from the bike from the pool to the house, so it isn't her first rack ride. She's a little shy, 'mmooo-ooommm really?'-style. Whatever, I'm going to make a statement! (intentionally awkward excitement) She gets on the bike and accepts my helmet. We're off to the car on the other side of the parking lot. No big deal.

Except, her lunch box was hanging off of her bag. It got caught in the wheel and took us both down. Thankfully she took the helmet. My big moment. We were splayed out on the parking lot blocking carpool. Everyone is unsure how to act when a mom cyclist falls in carpool.** Got a call from the principal the next day. Yea. It was ugly.

Yesterday I learned about a guy who sits on street corners with a video camera watching for people to do bad things. He calls it People Behaving Badly. Cyclists are mad at him.  

So, I give you my story. This is the day I behaved badly. I messed up.

There have been lots of other days when I messed up in my car too. I don't have to hear about those mistakes all the time from my daughter because they're harder to discern from a car seat in the back. My kids still brag about me and my biking. I'm still riding my bike to work.

Can we move on from this conversation about how cyclists don't stop at stop signs? There is so much more to the story of legitimate modes of transportation. Carpool means to pool the resource of a car. Cyclists are able to assess stop signs without coming to a full stop. Elementary students should be able to walk to school. It should be normal.

** {We know how to act about it later. We laugh.}