My son saved $6,200 over three years to buy his first electric dirt bike. My sister “borrowed” it for her daughter’s weekend ride and crashed it into a fence.
My dad said, “Bikes can be replaced.”
I called the academy director the next day… and withdrew my recommendation for her daughter’s $110,000 sports scholarship…
My son saved $6,200 over three years to buy his first electric dirt bike. My sister borrowed it for her daughter’s weekend ride and crashed it into a fence.
My dad said bikes can be replaced. I called the academy director the next day and withdrew my recommendation for her daughter’s $110,000 sports scholarship.
The composition notebook was sitting on the kitchen counter, open to the last page. My son’s handwriting, careful and slanted, filled every line. The final entry was circled in red pen.
$6,200. Done. Bike day.
Jude was 13 years old, and he had spent 3 years filling that notebook. Every dollar logged, every source recorded.
March 14, Mr. Patterson Lawn, $25. June 8, birthday money from Uncle Cliff, $50. August 22, washed Mrs. Delgado’s van and both patio chairs, $30. November 3, sold old Xbox games to Boone, $45.
Three years of mowing, washing, hauling, bagging leaves, walking the neighbor’s dog, cleaning out a storage unit for a retired teacher on our street who paid him $40 and gave him a bag of Jolly Ranchers. Every dollar went into a mason jar on his dresser. Every dollar got logged in the notebook.
6 weeks before the day everything broke, Jude and I drove to the dealer and bought the bike, a Siron light B, electric matte black.
It was not a pedal bike or a toy. It was a high-torque electric off-road motorcycle that could hit 30 m an hour on flat ground and weighed over 100 lb. One wrong throttle pull could launch it sideways.
The dealer walked Jude through the throttle response, the regenerative braking, and the kill switch for 20 minutes before letting him sit on it. He made Jude demonstrate the kill switch three times before he would hand over the key.
$2,200 under the model he originally wanted, which meant he had enough left over for a helmet, gloves, and a chest protector. He paid in cash.
$6,200 in 20s, 10s, and fives counted out of a mason jar that morning. The dealer counted it twice. Jude signed the receipt with a signature he had been practicing in the margins of his math homework for a month.
The saving had not been easy. There were stretches, especially in winter, when there were no lawns to mow and no cars to wash, and the notebook entries stopped for weeks.
January of the second year, Jude sat at the kitchen table and counted the jar, and it was $2,100. He had expected more. He sat there for a while, then got up and printed a flyer offering snow shoveling for $15 a driveway.
He taped them to mailboxes on our street and three streets over. That month, he shoveled 14 driveways and earned $210.
The notebook entry for February 1 said, “Shoveling season, $210 total, $2,310.” He had drawn a small snowflake next to it.
There were also moments when the money almost left. The second summer, Boon got a new gaming console, and Jude wanted one badly. He came to me and asked if he could take 300 from the jar.
I told him it was his money and his decision. He sat on his bed for 45 minutes. Then he came back and said, “I will wait.”
He went outside and mowed Mr. Patterson’s lawn instead.
That was the summer. The notebook started getting neater, like the handwriting was keeping pace with how seriously he was taking the project.
He rode the bike once around the dealer’s parking lot before we loaded it into the truck. When he climbed back into the cab, his hands were shaking, not from fear, from the kind of joy that a 13-year-old boy cannot hold in his body without it leaking out through his fingers.
He taped the receipt to the inside cover of the notebook and drew a box around it in red pen. The same pen he used to circle the final total. Then he closed the notebook, put it in his backpack, and did not stop smiling for 3 days.
I came home on a Friday afternoon and found it in the driveway.
Jude had left the bike at my father’s house the day before. He had ridden over after school, and when it started raining, I told him we would pick it up Friday. The bike spent one night in Cliff’s garage.
That was all it took.
The front fender was cracked down the middle. The handlebars were bent 45° to the left. The left foot peg was sheared off. The battery housing had a dent the size of a grapefruit, and the motor cowling was scraped to bare metal.
A section of chainlink fence post was still caught in the front wheel spokes. There was a note tucked under the seat.
Rene’s handwriting in purple pen with a smiley face at the end.
Small scratch will buff out. Exo.
I walked around the bike slowly. The front fender crack ran from the mounting bolt to the wheel well. The handlebars were bent 45° to the left, which meant a direct lateral impact at speed. The left foot peg was sheared clean off, the bolt stripped.
The battery housing dent was deep enough to compromise the sealed unit, which meant potential water damage to the electrical system. And threaded through the front wheel spokes was a section of galvanized chainlink fence post, bent and torn from whatever it had been attached to.
I took four photographs: front, left side, right side, and a close-up of the battery housing dent. Then I looked at the note again.
Small scratch will buff out.
The dealer printed a written repair estimate two days later, $2,200, with the VIN, damage photos, and a note that the battery housing alone would cost 800 to replace because the dent had broken the water resistance rating on the sealed unit.