Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 11) The bike set-up
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A few months after the egg trap, the police came for a ‘second bite at the suspect’ in what I’ll call the ‘bike set-up’ which got overblown at school and got me thrown off the cross-country team.

It started when a classmate asked me to steal a bicycle, and we agreed next Tuesday I would exchange a stolen bike for fifteen dollars. Prices have gone up, but this was 1965, our country was liberal and robust, and our national prosperity allowed people to live in optimism.

Tuesday arrived and the guy asked for his bike, but I had forgotten the whole thing, which was unusual. Later I wondered if that memory lapse stemmed from an innate knowledge that the offer was a set-up. I remember thinking his family could afford a bike, and seeing plenty of bicycles at his house, so why would I agree to steal a bike when I didn’t need money, nor was I in the bike-selling business?

But that’s a lie. I wanted the money, and I stole bikes. I sold a couple bikes, and wanted to make it a business. A month earlier, my friend Se and I were at the college trying to steal bikes from a locked garage behind a fraternity … the frat boys rushed out … and as usual, I got away in the night but they caught Se by the foot.

The frat boys held Se until his brother showed up a half hour later to get him. They pushed him around a bit, hit him once or twice, and made him drink a beer, but that was it. They decided not to call the police and let him go after assurances that his brother wasn’t the ‘partner’ who got away.

On another occasion, Se and I stole two bikes from older more-experienced thieves after watching them hide bikes along the railroad track. Later those guys came to Se’s house demanding return of their bikes and his dad told them to get off the property. A week later, somebody stood on the tracks above their house and put a bullet hole through their yellow aluminum canoe.

So I was a fledging bike thief, and it attracted the police probably because of egg throwing and various other spotted reports.

Maybe to me, the bike set-up was a social experiment … like a shared moment with another person, a human contact that may be difficult to explain.

Did I go along to see what would happen … like the egg-night where I knowingly walked into the trap, sure in the last moment I could high-step the bogey man and get away? Did I walk into these things to get a thrilling glimpse of the bogey man or just to flip people on their heads? This is the paradoxical question throughout my life.

It’s true that I was bored by ordinary day-to-day social interaction, and needed a jolt to remain alert, and manipulated people and situations to gain these stimuli … same as my father and older brothers behaviors. We lived for the whorl, and caused it when things became too sedate.

So judge me badly if you want, but I received a personal reward from those moments of heightened experience. It is an, oh so brief, connection with the elusive magic between people that I couldn’t attain otherwise.

Over the years, I have observed myself impulsively causing ‘disconcerting situations’ to create social connections because I couldn’t relate any other way. Which, my god, means these situations are where I plug in to society, and therefore, right or wrong, I am by compulsion a man that causes change.

I didn’t have a stolen bicycle for the guy on Tuesday, but I saw the money. We walked out to the bike rack where I pointed to the first unlocked 10-speed we came to, and said, ‘that’s your bike,’ and took his money. But I never touched the bike nor had seen it before in my life. It was pure scam, and the man paid me $15 so he could steal the bike himself. Which seemed amusing, but why should he know?

Two days later, the $15-man came back a dissatisfied customer. He complained the ‘stolen’ bike belonged to his neighbor. Soon after that, Dr Gray, the men’s athletic director, told me I had to return the money. And a few days following that, I walked straight up to the teacher’s table in the lunchroom, in front of the whole school, and told Dr. Gray the ‘thing we talked about was taken care of [wink, wink, I had given back the money].’ His eyes stuck out two inches from his head.

Who the hell was I?  I actually thought the bike incident was a secret between Dr Gray and me and that no other person at the teacher’s table could possibly be aware of it. When in fact everybody at the table including the principal was no doubt acutely aware of my actions.

My miscalculation goes to my secrecy, and the imagined belief that I am like all other people, when in fact I am quite different and very closed-mouth. I don’t understand human reactions and feelings at all. The more foolishly I am writing this book.

Imagine what the teachers at that table thought: they, like me, assume I am like them, and could only conclude my intent was to taunt them, especially since I provoked teachers before. I threw a hardpacked snowball at my homeroom teacher across the classroom … which was probably seen as a threat.

I tried to hit the homeroom teacher in the head with a snowball because he was a phug sucker for the popular kids, and also because he threw Se out of class for something I did.

The snowball missed its mark but took the papers off his desk and smacked hard against the far wall. It was thrown hard, but I had to jump up quick to unload it, so my aim was off. I didn’t like anybody picking on Se. He was my friend and was socially awkward, and ultimately took his aggression out on the road in a ’55 Ford. (Imagine the irony: a bicycle activist siding with an aggressive driver) He became a master wheelman pursued by the police across the winding pikes and crisscross valleys of southern Indiana. He was to cars what I became to bicycles.

That teacher never said a word about the snowball, and I never got into trouble. I discovered later that the teachers were afraid of me.

I probably pissed off teachers and I apologize for that, and I never intended to cause them fear. I only wanted to tell Dr. Gray that I kept my word and returned the money, but how awkward my lack of social skill twisted the situation from quasi-integrity into sheer stupidity that could never redeem me in their eyes.

Chapter 12) Dr Gray settles the score
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