Gay Bikes From Your Sister
I got a red Schwinn bicycle for Christmas when I was in Kindergarten. For his Kindergarten Christmas, my younger brother Jamie got an identical blue Schwinn, with that crazy boy bar added. (Why is that there again? It just seems counter-intuitive to stick a bar where it’s almost sure to come in contact with boys’ tender nether regions.)
I got a ten speed for Christmas the year before my youngest brother Peter started kindergarden, so ever-frugal, and a sucker for tradition, my mother began talking up how Peter would get my old bike.
I thought whole idea of hand me downs sucked. Good thing I was an eldest child, I suppose. Peter, on the other hand, thought getting my red Schwinn would be awesome. I think he even got it before Christmas because he was so motivated to join his bike riding siblings and show off his sister’s bike.
Now, our neighborhood was hilly and had plenty of vacant lots for building ramps and jumps and all kinds of outdoor fun. Dirt bike heaven, and most kids in the neighborhood, including the girls, had BMX bikes, not road bikes, and certainly not sturdy, practical, unstylish Schwinns. Peter didn’t seem to notice the difference, and once he got himself off the training wheels, he headed off to the “dirt hills” to show his stuff.
He was by far the youngest kid there, most of the kids were my other brother Jamie’s pals. Jamie wasn’t around (perhaps because his bike wasn’t suitable for such play and he avoided socializing in bike associated situations as a result.) Peter, ever fearless, rode down to join the dirt bike crew.
“Hey Peeeeeeee-ter. Wherdja get that bike?”
“It was my sister’s bike, she gave it to me!”
How many milliseconds do you think it took that mob of third graders to latch on to that juicy tidbit of information?
“Your sister’s bike, huh? You mean, it’s a GAY bike?”
Confused, my brother continued to gush over my bike:
“Oh no, it WAS my sister’s bike, but she gave it to me. Then my dad put the boy bar on it. See?” He pointed to the piece of metal that kept his bike from being a girl’s bike.
Unconvinced that Peter would fail to take the bait, one of the third grade bullies kept on picking on him.
“But it used to be a girl’s bike, right? I mean, your sister’s a girl, right?”
“Yeah…”
“So it was a girl’s bike!! It is a GAY BIKE!”
Kids have this innate sense of when they’ve gotten under your skin. Peter had no idea what gay was, but he could understand context well enough to know that he didn’t want to have a gay bike. Once that group of third graders saw that dark cloud of uncertainty and insecurity pass over my brother’s face, they locked in for the kill.
“Gay bikes! Gay bikes! Gay bikes from your sister!”
Over and over and over they chanted “GAY bikes, GAY bikes, GAY BIKES from your SISTER.”
He ran away yelling “It’s NOT a gay bike,” but that just fueled the fire. From then on, whenever he saw those kids, they’d yell or whisper or write “gay bikes” to make Peter aware that they hadn’t forgotten his vulnerability.
He quit riding his bike. He sold an absurd number of magazines for school or scouts so that he could win a cheap dirt bike and hide the Schwinn behind boxes in the garage. But even with a new bike, the taunting continued.
“Gay bikes, gay bikes, gay bikes from your SIS-ter.”
Even the family home wasn’t a gay-bikes free safe space for poor Peter. We wouldn’t taunt him, but my parents explained to him how silly the kids were being. They explained what gay meant, and how it didn’t make any sense for a bike to be gay. We had a laugh over that at the dinner table. Over time, “gay bikes” took a place in our family vernacular. It was widely applicable, “gay bikes” could mean “stupid,” “annoying,” “irritating,” and so on. I even nicknamed an aerobics overachiever at my college rec center “gay bikes.” 20 years later, “gay bikes” is a fond memory I have–piece of family history which caused me no suffering of my own.
According to family legend, the neighborhood kids dropped the “gay bikes” schtick when Peter came after a bunch of them who were holding my brother Jamie’s arms while a few of them hit him. Peter rode up on the scene, dropped his bike, ran full speed toward the crowd while yelling at the top of his lungs. The bullies ran off, scared away by a scrappy kid 3 years their junior. I don’t think Peter has been scared or intimidated or shamed by anyone since.
