Baby on bike

This morning I saw a man riding his bike. He was carrying his baby, about 12 months maybe, in one arm as he was riding around. I've seen him before, I think, riding his bike with his baby on his back in a baby-carrying back pack. No helmets.

This morning, though, he was holding the handle bars with one hand, other arm around the baby, slowly swooping across the car park and across the road before riding along one of the many bike paths in the area.

All I could think was how her soft skull could so easily crash onto the bitumen or concrete if he lost his concentration for just one second. I've been anxious about it all day. Clearly, the man was not anxious in the slightest. Either it never occurred to him to worry about the consequences of dropping her or of stopping suddenly, or he thought it was so unlikely that it just wasn't worth bothering about.

I've worried almost every second that the Noodle has been alive. Usually about entirely the wrong things, I have to say. The scary, dangerous moments were almost always the ones I hadn't thought about in advance.

I'm not quite sure if I'm just deeply horrified and appalled at the man on the bike's attitude or whether I am also just the slightest bit envious. I really don't want to see him again, in case I shriek out at him in my anxiety, and become the very agent that causes him to drop the child - blump - right on her head.