barnacle baby bike

2024-01-11

I was at The School and class was just letting out for the day. Kids flooded toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. But I had my bike, the big orange one, and didn’t want to carry it down the stairs around all those people. So I went over and caught one of the elevators.

When I got to the bottom, I almost made it all the way outside before realizing that I had actually forgotten my bike! So I ran back up the stairs, which had emptied out almost all the way by now. I was part of the way up when some maintenance staff at the top of the stairs hollered down at me to be careful. They had just painted. I looked down and the stairs, and the hand rails, and the walls, and everything had all been painted bright bright white. I tried to be very careful not to smudge any of the fresh paint.

I made it back to the classroom. Luckily it was unlocked. Got my bike and carried it carefully down the stairs. My bike knocked into the fresh paint once or twice despite me trying to be careful.

I got outside and started loading up my bike. I put some small items in my panniers, and put on my gloves. And while I was getting ready this fat blocky baby crawled up and sat on my shoulder and attached itself to me and hugged me around my neck.

It had a huge square head and kind of a scrunched up face. Its eyes were squinty and almost lost in the folds of its fat face. It carried an unwavering, unchanging grim expression. It didn’t ever do anything or say anything. It was just a barnacle.

I recognized it as the barnacle baby that was usually attached to the maintenance crew’s motor cart. So I resolved to return the baby to them before leaving for home.

At first I just walked around pushing my bike because I thought it might be risky and dangerous to ride a bike with a baby attached to your neck. But after a while, I became dissatisfied with how much progress I (wasn’t) making. So I very carefully stepped up on the bike and started slowly pedaling around The School looking for the maintenance crew. I was very mindful of my balance and any hazards in the path because I didn’t want to fall off my bike and crush the baby.

After looking for a while, I kind of gave up on actually finding them and instead just kind of pedaled around looking at stuff and talking to people. People were various degrees of interested in the fat baby attached to the side of my neck. The baby was consistently zero percent interested in anything at all, and remained impassive.

As soon as I wasn’t looking for them, the maintenance crew came walking around the corner and down the path towards us. They walked side by side, arm in arm, stretching across the full width of the path, in bright orange safety vests.

With relief and gratitude, I got up from where I was sitting and pedaled out to meet them to return the baby.