Saturday my son asked if I would help him work on his bike. What he really meant was “Dad, would you fix my bike?” So we worked on it for a while. We had bought a new innertube that he wanted put in. His old one had a slow leak and he was irritated that he had to keep pumping up his tire every couple of days. Well, I was mean and made him go thru the effort of checking his old tube for leaks. And what was worse, I made him do the majority of the work. So he turned his bike over, took off the rear tire, pulled out the tube and got the bucket of water. We have a little tool for taking tires off the rim but we couldn’t find it so I helped him do it with a screw driver. Have to be extra careful not to damage the tube when you do that. He pumped the tube up so we could run it thru the water but he didn’t get enough air in it so I put some more in. He got pretty excited because he was afraid the tube would burst. But we didn’t put that much in it. Still, we never found a leak. But he was insistent so we changed the tube anyway. This is where it got frustrating. We put the tire back on and he rode it around but it only took half an hour or so before it was going flat again. He made a big fuss and wanted to do something so I asked him what he wanted to do. “Put the old tube back in.” So we did. But not before checking the new tube for leaks. I was amazed that we were unable to find any leaks in it but I had seen it going flat. So we put the old tube back in. By that time his brother had joined us so we now had a “peanut gallery”. So we got the old tube back in and his bike all put back together. Then I was mean again and made him gather up the tools and put them away. He was actually pretty good about the whole episode. And in the end he was happy because the old tube held the air the rest of the day. I should ask him today if its still holding the air. Then again, maybe I won’t.
His fickleness (is that a word?!) reminded me of when he was younger - old enough to want his shoes tied but not old enough to do it himself. He would ask to have his shoes tied but it had to be just so. I can remember retying his shoes three and four times until I got it done to his satisfaction. Took me a little while but I finally learned that what he was looking for what having them tied tight. If they weren't tight enough he'd want you to do it over.
