Yer Kiddin' Me

I mean, this can't be real, right? It's a piece from The Onion or something. Has to be.

There is just no way that in the United Frickin' States of America that a school district has prohibited a student from riding his bike to school. Walking's also prohibited, just for the record.

Dear sweet heavenly day, what a bunch of utter loons. Riding my bike was a sign I was growing up. I lived two blocks from McKinley Elementary, which meant that I was permitted to ride my bike across two intersections, which to us was as near a sign of adulthood as could be. Now that we could do that, other signs of manhood, such as chest hair and smoking cigars, could be only months away.

Bike riding to Central Junior High was even more important. It was twelve blocks away, and we had all carefully figured that twelve blocks equaled a mile (and the snazzy odometer I got for my birthday, mounted on the ten-speed that replaced the trusty red Schwinn of my elementary years, confirmed that estimate). I could, under my own power and on my own authority, go a mile from my house. My mother could watch out the living room window all she wanted, but after I crossed 16th St., I was free as a bird now, and this bird you could not chain...ahem.

Of course that all went away when I got my license and had to drive my sister to school in order to be allowed to drive the five blocks to high school, but that's a story for another time. The school district in New York's policy does, apparently, allow high school students to bike to school. Yeah, right, that'll happen. Nothing 16-year-olds with their very own DMV-issued emancipation proclamations burning holes in their pockets want to do more than ride a bicycle to school where their friends could see them.

I can't understand it. If the kid rides his bike instead of riding in a gas-burning GlobalWarmerMobile, we've reduced emissions to those normal for a 12-year-old-boy eating school lunches, and he'll have those anyway. This way, they won't have the chance to concentrate inside the car. He's getting exercise, which is good because every few months or so my newspaper reminds me America's full of fat kids who sit on their couches, play video games and buy Hannah Montana DVDs. Where these fat kids all were when I was one and could have used a peer group, the newspaper does not tell me. And did you catch the detail that when the lady and her son showed up to school and they were greeted by administrators and a state trooper? They needed an armed presence to try to keep the kid from pedaling to class?

I'm left with only one conclusion: The people who run schools -- at least in Saratoga Springs, NY -- really are as dumb as we thought they were when we were students.