my groin hurts

If you’re careful, you’ll catch some incredible conversations there. In the emergency room of a hospital near me, a man in his 30s confesses to his father about cycling.

“I know how to ride a bike, but I don’t speak English,” the father replies. I would prefer to speak English.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” his son replies bitterly.

Then they fall into a grudge-filled silence and I think of my first bike, the first bike I learned to fall on, not ride. My father made it from scrap pieces. I went to Rastro one day and bought a handlebar; another day, a saddle; another, a wheel, a chain, a tire… That’s how he built a Frankenstein car that the Kings brought to me on January 6th. I didn’t even know that each piece came from a different machine, so I took it with great excitement and went with it to the open space near our house.

I immediately realized that it was very large for my height, which did not frighten me. Instead of riding comfortably from the saddle, I put my right leg between the tubes forming its skeleton, reached the pedal on that side and started to move as if one leg was longer than the other. Of course, I fell over and over again, but I was so eager to learn that I finally mastered that strange method of riding. By the way, the bike was breaking down like me, but they cast me and we bought him a new piece from the junkyard.

In this, a nurse calls me and I go for a consultation. I tell the doctor that my right groin hurts a lot because that’s why I came to the ER. He asks me if I’m making any effort, and I’m about to tell him the weird way I learned to ride a bike. Your relationship with your first bike will depend in part on your relationship with your body, regardless of what language you express yourself in.