Glinda's Believe It Or Not...

Today I encountered an amazing sight as I made a 'right-on red' turn at a traffic light. There across the road waiting for the light to turn green for them...was... a person on a bicycle!! It's got to be a first for me. I have talked until I was blue in the face as an elementary teacher and now as a safe driving instructor for AARP that bicyclists are supposed to follow the same rules as vehicles. I don't think I have ever seen a bicyclist stop at a stop sign or a traffic light. Immediately two things came to mind: first that I should buy a lottery ticket, and second...it reminded me of the bicycle safety movie that I showed to the kids in my first year of teaching in NJ.

It was at the end of the school year, and because the [original] school had burned down during a night in April, each classroom was bused to a neighboring school wherever an available room could be used as a classroom until June. June was always a difficult month even if you weren't the odd room from a different school.

Anyway, I was looking through the audio-visual catalog for a movie on bicycle safety. In the index, there were many choices...one of which was titled: "One Got Fat". I located the description which described the dozen key elements of bicycle safety that it addressed for primary level kids. I didn't preview it. It had a strange title but it was about bicycle safety...Right??

The movie projector [ what?] was cooperative in that I was able to thread the reel-to-reel [what?] without much difficulty [It didn't chew it up even once]. Lights out, and here we go.

It was a story about twelve kids who each packed a bagged lunch and then rode their bikes to the park for a picnic. There was spectacular sunshine, lots of smiling and laughing, and then quite the series of unfortunate events.

One kid immediately began doing stunts on his bike and crashed. They picked his lunchbag out of the twisted basket of his bike and stored it in someone else's basket. Then there were eleven.
Apparently there was a participant who had not had his bike checked out for safety features and his brakes failed. His lunch was picked up off of the ground, placed in the same basket as the first casualty's lunch was stored, and onward went the rest of the kids to the park. Now there were ten kids enroute to the picnic.
They met a friend walking along on the sidewalk, who asked them for a ride.

"Sure! Hop on the front of the handlebars and ride double with me."
Not able to control the bike with the added weight and distraction...Bam!! Then there were nine.

By this time, it was quite apparent that bicycle safety was shown by the many, varied, and unusual crashes that could happen and cause injury to both bike and boy!

One boy rode against the traffic. Eight.

One had no headlight and so was unseen riding through a tunnel.

And then there were seven.

Imagine my shock when one was listening to music through some earphones and was run over by a steamroller! Six.

No helmet to protect your brain...Five. Etc., etc., and so forth!

Are ya' scratching your head about the title? One Got Fat?

Well, only one kid made it to the park on that sunny day for the planned picnic, and he ate all twelve lunches!!

Did it get the point across to the kids about bicycle safety? Yes it did. Did they follow the twelve safety rules...maybe [not!].

And I previewed subsequent movies before showing them to the kids!!

No more surprises along those lines.