Me, Warren And A Tricycle

My very first friend in life was Warren. Warren was something of a daredevil, unlike me. His family lived three houses along from my family and we became friends around the age of three.

The street we lived in was a crescent with about thirty houses on quite spacious lots. Each end of the crescent opened up onto a fairly busy street named Ladies Mile. Why it was provided that name I have no idea. As my parents knew everyone on our street, my siblings and I when kids and neighborhood friends were free to wander with strict instructions; not to go outside the crescent. Most everyone who lived in the crescent knew everyone else so there was always someone looking out for us.

When we were five or thereabouts, Warren suggested we should try a journey outside the crescent. So sneakily, we agreed that we would use my three-wheel tricycle (there were no kiddies bikes back then) for the journey, traveling out one end of the crescent, down Ladies Mile to the other end, and in doing so, riding a complete circle. Ladies Mile was a gentle hill from the top of the crescent to the other end of the crescent but the road was bumpy with a number of potholes.

On the day of our planned trip, we pushed my tricycle up to the top of the crescent. Warren sat on the seat and I stood on the little platform between the two back wheels, with my hands on Warren's shoulders. When I was in place, Warren shouted out "Let's go." He began peddling madly down the road. We hit a couple of bumps and I was bouncing up and down on the platform to such a degree that I decided to move my hands from Warren's shoulders to around his waist.

Just as I was in the process of making my safety move, the front wheel of the bike hit a pothole. The back wheels lept up and with my hands not holding onto anything, I was launched into the air like a rocket over Warren's head, completing a perfect forward flip (this, according to Warren later on). As we were both dressed in shorts and t-shirts sans shoes or sandals, I had very little protection. I landed on my hands and knees with my chin, nose and forehead carving a niche in the blacktop.

I picked myself up with blood streaming down my legs and down my face. I would guess I was wailing at that time but I had enough wits about me to run for home, leaving Warren behind to pick up the wreckage.

The spill happened about a five-minute walk back to my home but I think I made it in record time. My mother, an aunt and a couple of women neighbors were having afternoon tea (a New Zealand tradition) on the front verandah as I came howling down the hill. I heard later my mother and grandmother almost had heart attacks as this screaming dervish came belting down the footpath towards them. Initially, my mother thought I had been hit by a car.

As I came within range she saw the gravel rash, scooped me up and took me to the bathroom where she ran a bath, stripped off my blood-soaked clothes and proceeded to clean me up. My mother, being a registered nurse believed in iodine as a cure-all for all cuts and scrapes and she generously swabbed all my cuts and scrapes with this all healing but extremely painful first-aid gravel remover.

When I was all cleaned up and my sobbing and crying had subsided, she managed to extract from me what had happened. By this time, Warren had dragged the wrecked tricycle back to his place where he was questioned by his mother as to why he was bringing a wrecked tricycle home.

This entailed a visit to my mother who exhibited me all bandaged and bloodied. Eventually, the story came out with the end result that Warren and I were grounded for a couple of weeks and when he confessed that the idea for the adventure on the tricycle was his idea, his parents ended up buying me a new trike with Warren's pocket money reduced for a few weeks.

This would be the first of many adventures Warren and I had as kids, some our parents knew about, many they didn't.

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