When a kid paws your bike

[slofox]

In general I am very tolerant of kids. I was a teacher for over a decade and learned that there is almost always some good in a kid somewhere if you can just dig it out...(note the "almost always"). But every so often I meet one who sows the seeds of doubt. Please continue dear reader...

Last night I stopped at the supermarket on the way home. As I was removing helmet etc etc some kid came up and said something along the lines of "VROOM VROOM!"...he was a little hard to understand - I guessed English was not his first language...
Normally I am more than happy to talk to kids about the bike but this little bugger grabbed the throttle and twisted it back and forth as he repeated his vroom vroom bit.....I was torn between maintaining my polite front and busting his fucking head in.......conversation went something like this...
Me: "Don't touch the bike kid. You NEVER touch someone's bike!"
Him: "Why not?"
Me: (suppressing the urge to say "coz I'll bust ya fuckin' head in if ya do see!!!!") "Because it is just not done. People are very touchy about their bikes"
Him: "Why?"
Me: "It just IS that way. Bikes are very precious and expensive. You bust it and you would be paying for it for the rest of your (probably short) life."
Him: (as I remove the helmet) "How old are you?"
Me: 60. Sixty years old!"
Him: "You OLD!!!"
Me: "Yep. I was young one day and when I turned around I was OLD! Probably because I didn't meddle with people's BIKES!!!"
Him: (again) "vroom vroom!!!"
Me: "I'm going in to the shop. DON'T TOUCH THE BIKE, YES?"
Him: "vroom vroom" (but he left the throttle alone this time)

To be honest I was scared to leave him out there with the bike. I think he would have gotten on to it if he thought he could get away with it. I told him I had turned the alarm on (haha) and if he touched it it would scream its head off and the cops would sic their dogs on him and then lock him up forever......in a pit filled with cockroaches, spiders and wasps....he seemed a little disbelieving of this bit funnily enough. But he did follow me into the mall so I felt a little better.
This is the first time I have ever felt anxious about leaving the bike outside the shops, never having had the pleasure of meeting such a weird kid...I am still not convinced that he was not a little cracked...

[Trudes]

"you look with your eyes not your hands" a valuable lesson for all!!

[Headbanger]

Sounds like a reguler kid to me.

You say you were a teacher, You have any kids of your own?

[ManDownUnder]

how old was the kid?

If it was a littlun (like... 6) I'd have asked if they wanted to sit on it - and reinforced it's only ok because you (the owner) had said so - a lot of people get pissy etc

Obviously if he was 18 that'd be a different story

[slofox]

"you look with your eyes not your hands" a valuable lesson for all!!

That was my mantra when I was teaching...I told the kids I would chop their hands off if they used them...you could do that in the olden days. Say it anyway, probably would've gotten into trouble if I HAD cut any hands off...course the little ba... er - darlings always laughed in my face when I threatened them like that...

[slofox]

Sounds like a reguler kid to me.

You say you were a teacher, You have any kids of your own?

I have two adult kids and three grandchildren...

how old was the kid?

He would have been maybe 10 or so...old enough to know better I thought...no parents in sight. Quite a big kid. I wondered where he had come from since I had never seen him around the local mall before...

[ManDownUnder]

He would have been maybe 10 or so...old enough to know better I thought...no parents in sight. Quite a big kid. I wondered where he had come from since I had never seen him around the local mall before...

Yeah points taken.

[Headbanger]

He would have been maybe 10 or so...old enough to know better I thought...no parents in sight. Quite a big kid. I wondered where he had come from since I had never seen him around the local mall before...

Makes more sense now, I thought you were talking about a 6 year old.

[BMWST?]

i once had a 40 minute conversation with a next door neihbours son as i was cleaning my bike....his only part in the conversation was..."why?".....
I was determined to get the little guy to say something else...i did not succeed.

[Big Dave]

i once had a 40 minute conversation with a next door neihbours son as i was cleaning my bike....his only part in the conversation was..."why?".....
I was determined to get the little guy to say something else...i did not succeed.

Just ask - 'Why not?'

[madbikeboy]

There's something incredibly fascinating about a motorcycle to a kid - I think kids can relate better to a motorcycle as it kind of looks like what they ride (meaning bicycle). When I was a kid, I was fascinated by motorcycles, and I figured it was the freedom of a bike, without the need to pedal. And I was sort of right.

[Starky307]

i once had a 40 minute conversation with a next door neihbours son as i was cleaning my bike....his only part in the conversation was..."why?".....
I was determined to get the little guy to say something else...i did not succeed.

Been there, done that, and I didn't suceed either.

[Headbanger]

There's something incredibly fascinating about a motorcycle to a kid - I think kids can relate better to a motorcycle as it kind of looks like what they ride (meaning bicycle). When I was a kid, I was fascinated by motorcycles, and I figured it was the freedom of a bike, without the need to pedal. And I was sort of right.

I see it in my oldest boy (4), To him his bike is his wheels and about the coolest thing in his universe (though I helped by buying him the metallic green bike with the flame paint job) to see my bike which is ten times the size, and roars around making noise just frazzles his head space.

The seed has been sown, Can't go anywhere without him pointing out all the motorbikes...And i wouldn't put it past him to waltz up to a complete stranger and tell him his bike was cool.

[Patrick]

Just ask - 'Why not?'

Why???????????????

[slofox]

There's something incredibly fascinating about a motorcycle to a kid - I think kids can relate better to a motorcycle as it kind of looks like what they ride (meaning bicycle). When I was a kid, I was fascinated by motorcycles, and I figured it was the freedom of a bike, without the need to pedal. And I was sort of right.

Right again MBB.
BUT.
I do think there is a difference between admiring a bike and just coming up to a complete stranger on a bike, grabbing the throttle and twisting shit out of it...if he had asked could he touch it I would have said "yes of course"..but to just grab it? Without asking? Not this bike...!
I am more than happy to have kids look at the bike, talk about it, touch it etc IF they show due respect. But this fulla did none of that. To me, he was way out of line.