Most of my childhood enduring memories are of the ordinary variety. However, there is one occurrence that stands out above others, it’s the old man at the same time every morning that peddles around on his mini-tricycle with same vigor every day. I wake up a quarter ‘til six because of the compulsory education laws, but he does it out of the pure passion of the heart. My morning is only not normal if the man is not peddling around.
I live in a place where not much happens, where I go to school even less happens. There are not many anomalies. Like every town, we have a Walmart, strip malls, a McDonalds, subdivisions, apartments and our fair share of trump supporters. It lacks the quirks of a small southern town and the amenities of a large city. No, obscure festivals happen here; there are no famous people from here and there’s no outsized high school football craze. If my hometown was one of those games where you would get a picture and be asked to circle what didn’t fit, it would be a nearly impossible chore and that’s the point.

This place wasn’t always so wooden in character. I’m told it used to be a place where chitterlings were sold on the street side and cows roamed the entire land. The mass movement of people here has squeezed all the charm out of this place and replaced with groups who are so divided racially or ideologically that it creates no consensus feeling in the town. (Usually people think population experiments like this lead to melting pots that are rich with culture, however, much more places go to the opposite direction and all the different cultures are suppressed to make a flavorless place. I’m not saying there is animosity among people, but that there is a feeling that it is best for people to mind their own business and not explore their differences.) There is a bunch a people living here out of convenience and price, not because of a personal connection to this place.

This is all me trying to explain why a man who for over ten years has been driving his little bike is so fascinating to me. It's magical how in a place that sticks with regular conventions like boys riding bikes and the elderly staying in their house. This is a man that refuses to be defined by where he lives. He chooses not to rebel in a loud, attention-grabbing manner in broad daylight, he rebels in the dark with only 7 to 3 urban professionals driving by to witness his protest against this society’s norms.

I’m not even sure if it’s the same man (considering age it is quite possible the first dawn bike-peddler maybe deceased and was replaced by another man of similar physique). It doesn’t matter, though. As long as someone rides with a smile that lights up the dark my life is satisfied. I don’t know where he peddles from, peddles too or why he peddles, all that matters is that he continues even as his peers move into assisted living communities or die. This is a man that stays above the influence even as his muscles ache and his vision deteriorates, he doesn’t resort to the same fate as the rest of his mates. He continues to decide to physically push against and not acquiesce to the expectations this place has for men his age.