Everyone Should Have a Bike
And these are my reasons why:
A few days after I graduated high school, I got in a giant car wreck that totaled my paid off car. It was a horrible mess and my mom freaked out and bought me a new car with a giant car payment attached to it, telling me that she would help me make the payments on it. She did help me make a few payments but once I got a job her attitude completely changed, and she told me that I needed to start making the payments on it. This was fine for a while until I realized as a new graduate that life is really tough, and affording the bills all while going through college was pretty much impossible. I was working a lot of nights trying to afford school, rent, utilities, the car, car insurance, and food. It was a lot to juggle and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Now, in hindsight I have realized that there were a lot of other options at the time, but I decided that I needed to make a choice. I needed to drop something, so I chose school. Juggling my time between school and work was really hard for me but I figured that with a job I was at least getting money for all of my bills. Now that I look back at my life though, I really wish I had had a bike, and after getting a bike, I am now realizing that everyone should have a bike.
I have had this idea floating around my head for a while now and I would love to see what everyone would think of it. Everyone that graduates high school should get a bike from the government. It could:
-Incentivize graduation. Some people need more of a reason to graduate than just getting a piece of paper.
-Reduce gas pollution and make people less reliant on gas.
-Create more jobs within the bike industry.
-Keep obesity rates down.
-Create healthier coping mechanisms.
-Create an easy way for someone to get to and from work after they graduate high school.
I could probably go on with a million reasons why everyone should have a bike, but my main point is: bikes are fun, and everyone should have one. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, my bike from Walmart was $200 and I love the stinking thing. And would it not be cool if everyone started having their own government provided bikes from graduation? And some people already have bikes or a car at graduation so they could choose to opt out of the program if they really wanted to. Or, maybe it could be a program that people could apply for so that the government was not necessarily providing bikes for everybody, but just the people it would benefit the most (which I say is everyone but I am trying to come up with more options here.) I myself come from a more run down part of the country where this kind of program would have made things a lot better for a lot of kids and their families. Or maybe it could be a program where kids could work for the funds around their schools and communities so that by the end of the year they could afford a bike. Or maybe the government could provide the bike and require that the student gets a job and pays them back. I am not sure of exact logistics for this plan, but all I do know is that if everyone had a bike it could do a lot of good for a lot of young Americans.
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The Dandelion Seed
As I sat scrubbing an old kitchen floor, grateful yet discouraged by my new yet difficult cleaning job, I noticed a dandelion seed floating towards me. “It must be my lucky day” I thought to myself. For, who is lucky enough to find a perfectly formed dandelion seed floating around, dancing amongst the dust and dirt in this old, gross place? I lightly picked it up with the tips of my right thumb and index finger, carefully set it in the palm of my left hand, and gently blew it out the already open door and into the wind with a wish in mind. A wish that the wind would blow me away with this seed. The wind, however, blew it right back into me, and no matter how many times I tried to blow it away the wind kept blowing it right back to me. That is when I noticed the field of dandelions this one perfect little seed flew away from, and that is when I realized that I was not lucky at all. There was a whole field of mesmerizing white dandelions, and I was just in the right place and time to notice the one little seed that got away, dancing in the wind, and searching for its new home to plant itself in. “Maybe the seed is stupid” I thought, feeling stupid myself for wishing upon the little seed, and a little sad for the seed. Because I mean, look at the field of dandelions it came from. All of those dandelions came from seeds that were smart enough to stay in the same area and plant themselves one right after the other. Those were the seeds that knew to stay close, the smart ones, and although they created a field of weeds, they were beautiful when put together. Put together, they were all enough for each other. This seed, however, thought it knew that it did not belong and flew away with the wind, searching for a home away from the obvious home, but why would it float to me? It was floating away from the home it knew it should have had, and right into an old, worn out townhome that I was feeling stupid enough to clean for a measly $15 an hour. When I had first accepted the job it seemed like a lot of money, but after 6 hours of scrubbing dirt and dried paint off of linoleum that my new boss gave to me because she did not want to do it herself, it felt like my own personal Hell, and this seed happened upon me there, with the wind lightly whistling, asking me to carry its tiny piece of nature off to somewhere new. Trying again and again to come back to me because of the way the wind was blowing. Maybe it never wanted to come to me, and the wind forced it to be there. Maybe it was asking me to fly away with it, off away on a new adventure. I wanted to. I longed to go off with this seed. But then maybe it was just trying to tell me something, maybe it was begging me to plant it somewhere, anywhere, over and over again. But who plants weeds? Not me. Not anybody that I knew. That is not the way we were taught to live. “This seed does not want me” I said, sure that I was right. So, I left it on the kitchen ground, figuring if I did a good enough job at cleaning the place that it would eventually find its way back to some dirt, somewhere, all on its own.
By Sierra Peck 3 years ago in Earth
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