It was Monday.

The weather was great and the man across the street was teaching his son to ride a bike.

The dad held onto the bike and walked, then ran alongside.

It reminded me when my son learned to a ride his bike after we took off the training wheels.

I can see Bill running alongside to make sure Nicky didn’t fall and hurt himself. He always had more patience when it came to teaching stuff like tying shoes, throwing balls, and also had experience riding a bike. I’d never had one, but did have a tricycle.

It seems just like yesterday when our kids went from riding bikes to driving cars, and as memory serves, Bill got that teaching job too. He worked with our oldest princess until she got her driver license, on her third try.

I was always the pushover and he was the disciplinarian.

He gave them painfully long lectures. They also had to say why they did whatever dumb thing it was they did.

“I don’t know,” wasn’t an acceptable answer.

“You know why you did it!” he’d say.

Then one day the #1 Princess said, “I just wanted to.”

“Well, that’s a reason, but not a good one.”

The kids instinctively knew I was easy prey. They used it by telling me every dumb thing they did, then would say, “But don’t tell Dad.”

When they were young I thought it was kind of cool that they’d tell me stuff, and not tell Dad. But by their twenties Bill had bought me a bike and taught me to ride it. I didn’t even need training wheels to tell our kids what they didn’t want to hear, but needed to know.

I even told their Dad what they said, but asked him not to tell.