There was a time, probably around when I was in the fourth grade, when unicycling became popular at school. Maybe they were delivered to the school as supplies. Everyone practiced and competed with each other during lunch breaks and after school, and the whole school was abuzz with students riding around in circles in the school yard and playing tag on unicycles. I soon learned to ride one, too, and enjoyed riding it every day.
However, because they were school equipment, I didn't get many turns, and I never got to ride on one as much as I wanted. There were students who begged their parents to buy one for them. A classmate in my neighborhood was one of those who got a unicycle right away, just as I had hoped, because her family was relatively wealthy, and her parents were the type to lavishly buy toys for their children. Of course, I begged her to let me ride on it, and she did, but it was, after all, her unicycle. I didn’t get a turn to ride on it often, and I was envious of her.
My parents spent a lot of money on my education, but they were very strict about luxury items, and I rarely had access to trendy toys. I only got to play with Barbie dolls and video games at my friends' houses. I am thankful for that now, but at the time I was sometimes devastated by the difference between me and my classmates. Partly because of that, I wanted to grow up as soon as possible. I wanted to control my own life.
I am sure I made a desperate appeal at the time and that my parents talked it over. On my birthday that year, after the unicycle boom had died down, my father and mother looked happy and told me to go check the garage. “Oh, no," I thought. I got a unicycle.
Even a fourth grader could understand this situation. I put on a very happy face and played with the unicycle for the next few months to save my parents’ faces. I wonder what happened to the unicycle. I can't remember what happened to it now.