Inner Child: “No Way!”

My employer generously offers an appreciation gift upon milestone anniversaries at the company. They don’t simply send an engraved fountain pen, mind you. They’ve contracted with a company to provide a catalog of gift options, based on years of service. I’ve been with the company long enough to qualify for some quite nice gifts, and for some reason, seem to have narrowed it to a rugged bike or a snazzy Calphalon cookware set.

The Calphalon would see more action than the bike, which probably would join the vintage Schwinn 12-speed World Sport now sitting with flat tires, collecting some sort of wall crumblings in the basement. I should ride a bike, yet for a number of reasons I’m not likely to suddenly become a bike commuter. OK, two big reasons: I don’t want to get creamed riding amongst the law-breaking rageaholics motoring in my city, nor do I want to so endanger the little girl, whom I surely would want to give a pedal ride.

There are other nice gifts, although they’d probably collect dust too, or frustrate me. The Calphalon we could use, and I’m less likely to run out and buy such a cookware set for myself than I would be to purchase a new bike if I ever adjusted my attitude about city cycling. The thing is, sedentary and middle-aged as I am, there’s a little kid in me — a very active one, who wonders why she hasn’t been allowed to ride a bike in years — who’s yelling at me. “What?!?!?!” she says. “What’s cookware? What’s Calphalon? You’re picking that when you could have a mountain bike? No way!”

I’m trying to explain things to my inner child. Maybe she will enjoy making pancakes with the new cookware, or soup. Yeah, soup! That should make her stop nagging me about the bike.