The brain becomes less plastic at a certain point, yes, but really what I’d argue is that adulthood sets in, and with it comes the monotonous mundanity of accepting the person you have taken into adulthood: yourself. It is a somewhat-scientific, often-disputed fact that learning gets harder as you age. I put one foot on the pedal, try to push off, to launch-and I fall. The hardest part is the launch, Hal says.
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Countless people walking endless circles on the pedestrian path around the field. A mother and her child under another tree. There is someone picnicking in the shade. We are in a grassy field off of 72nd Street-harder to get going on, harder to stay going on, but softer on the body when the body inevitably goes down. If you can see me, you must also see my friend Hal riding right beside, a city kid his whole life, someone who can swerve a fixie through traffic, someone who can ride a bike with only one of his four limbs touching any part of the thing. “ Running Dysmorphic,” “ What I Want to Know of Kindness,” “ Out There: On Not Finishing,” “ Repetitive Stress,” “ I Miss it All,” “ Children in the Garden,” and “ Something About the Present.”īefore the first of these many falls, there is a day where you might find yourself-if you are in Central Park one morning in early July-watching me, a 32-year-old man, learning for the first time how to ride a bike. Read Devin Kelly’s previous Longreads essays: I have, in the process of falling, said the same chorus of things, all at the same resigned volume, never too loud. I have also fallen in front of no one, in the sheer absence of a soul, alone in a parking lot in the early morning, after having bumped into a traffic cone. I have fallen in front of a mother and her baby. I have fallen, while white-knuckling the brakes, gently and sideways into a fence while a herd of children clutching a communal leash waddled past me. I have fallen in front of a family of tourists in Central Park, and then I have gotten up and fallen again. I have fallen in front of a single person so engrossed by their phone that they did not see me falling. I have fallen in front of so many people.
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I have fallen while going so slow that I could have just stepped off the bike. I have fallen trying to speed up, and I have fallen trying to slow down.
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I have fallen, in no particular order, and in many various quantities, on my elbows, my knees, my thighs, my head, my shoulders, my wrists, and my hands. I have fallen on asphalt, grass, astroturf, and gravel. I have fallen turning a corner on Randall’s Island at 20 miles an hour, and I have fallen at the perilous speed of nearly zero miles an hour. Over the past year, I have fallen countless times. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.ĭevin Kelly | Longreads | Ma| 29 minutes (5,259 words)