It's like riding a bicycle

Last November I learnt how to ride a bicycle for the first time. At 45 years old.

As the youngest of six kids, I suspect my folks had their hands full and were also kind of over it by the time I was toddling, so we never got to learning. Even more mysteriously, I don’t recall ever seeing a bicycle in our home, despite the fact that all my siblings know how to ride, and we lived in a cul de sac, which is the suburban equivalent of Disney Land for kid-bikers.

I’ve always wanted to learn. Especially after living in Amsterdam briefly, where I watched people whipping past me with ease, flaunting their strong thighs and freedom of movement.

But between fear and taxes I never quite got there. Adulting is complicated, we aren’t as free as we dream we’re going to be when we are twelve. We have to make a living and do DIY, so sometimes the other things we want to do fall through the cracks. Plus, the older you get, the more you forget how to learn new things and how to fall.

Kids learn hundreds of new things a day. Like, don’t touch that, it’s hot. Mud is soft. What happens if you put your tongue on that? Oh, so that’s what sand tastes like. And what’s that hole on the back of the dog for?

“We start out dangerously curious”

We start out dangerously curious, licking knives, sticking our fingers in sockets and running with scissors, and then we do the whole school thing for the first twenty-odd years of our lives. It’s a learning bonanza that seems to sate a lot of our curiosity.

After that we launch ourselves into the world on another steep learning curve, including figuring out how to cook things other than two-minute noodles, furnishing apartments on shoe-string budgets and beer crates, and working out out how the workplace works. Then after that, I’d say we’re pretty much on our own.

I was trying to think what other new things I’ve learnt as an adult. It’s mostly been things like, if your date won’t tell you where he lives, he might be married. Carbs are not your friend. And if the salmon tastes funny, don’t eat it.

Over and above all the learning they get to do, kids are also much better at falling than adults. They’re always doing it, like it’s no big deal. I suppose they’re specifically-designed for it, as they’re built closer to the ground, so they don’t have as far to fall as we do. Plus, they have that in-house puppy fat, and the smaller ones wear diapers for extra padding. So that’s been my other argument for putting off learning to ride a bike for the last four decades. I’ve never been the most coordinated person in the cul de sac. If there’s a piece of furniture I’ll bump into it, if there’s a table leg I’ll stub my toe on it, and my f*k, Marelieze, but if there’s a pole I’m pretty sure I’ll ride into it.

Being this clumsy, and this adulty, I’m not sure I would survive a fall. Someone would have to call an ambulance and my Twitter feed would never hear the end of it.

But eventually I ran out of excuses, and my boyfriend took me out and ran alongside the bicycle while I screamed at him not to let me go. Surprisingly, we’re still together. When I asked who had been easier to teach, his six-year-old daughter or me, he laughed. It’s not fair though, she had fairy wheels.

Now the floodgates of adult learning have opened for me. Well maybe not flood gates, but a trickle window for sure.

I’ve been learning Italian on Duo Lingo for 126 days straight. My guy is Italian, so after Bike-Gate, I felt it was the least I could do.

And more recently I signed up on 42courses.com, and burnt my way through a social media course, one on storytelling, one on creativity for business and I’m currently in the thick of one on behavioural economics. So, I can tell you what blisters, dominatrixes and SAS soldiers have in common, or some of the important elements of writing for SEO. All of which might make me a more interesting copywriter to hire, or at the very least a harder copywriter to fire.

So now every day is a school day. They say kids are sponges, so maybe adults are just slightly older sponges, that don’t smell as good, and are a little less adept at absorbing stuff, but still do the job when required.

A version of this column, by Paige Nick, first appeared in The Sunday Times (South Africa) on 26th April 2020.