Storytime

--You just have to know how to handle it.--

My request was eagerly granted and my friend handed me the key. I went around to the left side and threw my leg over. Without me realizing it my heart pounded a little faster. My breathing quickened and sweat appeared on my un-helmited head. Smiling, I turned the key and the engine growled to life louder than I expected. I blipped the throttle a couple of times and tried to act cool but this was a strange feeling. I was almost parallel to the ground and it felt like all my weight was on my hands and wrists but there was no backing down now.

I gave it a respectable amount of gas and my head jerked back coming out of the driveway. As fast as I could shift I rocketed through the gears and down the street and jammed on the brakes just in time to keep from blowing through the intersection a couple of hundred yards from my house. I have no idea how fast I had gone. My mind barely had time to process that I had done it but I had somehow blown well past highway speeds and back to zero in just seconds. I put the bike in neutral at the stop sign and sat there. My brain is on fire. I'm laughing like a mad scientist and realize it but I can't stop. I want more! I'm a junkie with the need for speed and I have the needle pressed up against my arm and I'm about to hit the throttle and inject the adrenaline but my age and wisdom are telling me to stop. This is crazy! This thing should come with a matching casket and I know it but the need inside screams for more. It'll be ok! I want this. I need this! I deserve this! Just a little more...

Mark it down and tell my Mama that I did the right thing for once. Sweating but smiling, I eased the beast around the block very slowly and carefully and nosed it into my driveway. It was six hundred cc's of carbon fiber-wrapped crack without lights, mirrors, warning labels or anything else that would do anything but make it go fast and I grudgingly gave it back to the eighteen year old owner. I felt old for not airing it out and indulging my craving but at least I was still alive. I felt older when I heard myself say something about "too fast" to the rocket's owner. He said, "You just have to know how to handle it" and then commenced to show me what that meant.

Sixty seconds later when I was helping my young friend out of my neighbor's demolished bushes, my age and wisdom were not enough from keeping me from asking him about that statement.