A Lesson Refreshed, Decades Later

 Some of the lessons you learn while you’re in school have nothing to do with school itself—or, at least anything that happens in a classroom or laboratory.

Sometimes you don’t realize you’ve learned those lessons—or they don’t make sense—until much later.  The reason could be that you forget, or don’t think about, whatever brought about those lessons for a long time.

Yesterday I took an afternoon ride to Randall’s Island and came back via a series of paths and streets that more or less parallel the Harlem River. As I passed Yankee Stadium, I thought I saw a somewhat familiar face. Indeed he was: a neighbor with whom I’ve exchanged friendly greetings. He was selling baseball caps and other souvenirs of the baseball team and New York City, he said, not because he needs the money, but to “get out of the house.”

I told him I understood: It’s one of the many reasons I ride my bicycle.

“And you look so strong, so confident,” he said. 

I demurred. “ Well, I’m not so strong…”

“You are. And you look so happy.”

Vicki told me the same thing, almost verbatim. She’d seen me spinning my pedals—on my Nishiki International, if I remember correctly—from Buccleuch (Rumor had it that spelling it correctly was a requirement for graduating from Rutgers) onto College Avenue.

We met in a class and went for a beer. (You could do that as an 18 year old in those days.) The attraction wasn’t sexual, at least as best as I could tell, nor was it “spiritual” or even platonic. We simply “got” each other: We were exploring creative and intellectual endeavors, and learning about ourselves in ways we never could have in the milieux each of us left.

One thing she immediately noticed about me was my lack of confidence in myself: something I still struggle with.  “But I saw a whole different person on your bike.”

“Nobody ever told me I wasn’t good enough to ride my bike.”

“The way you rode your bike, you’re good enough for anything.”

I thanked her, even though I didn’t believe what she said. I don’t think she was trying to give me false hope; she simply was describing who she saw riding by the Rutgers campus.

I hadn’t thought about that moment, or Vicki, in decades. And it took a random encounter with a neighbor selling baseball caps by Yankee Stadium to give me a “refresher.”