My childhood home will be forever idyllic in my mind. Our backyard was spacious and mostly flat, leading to a small hill that sloped up to a line of boulders edging a large, wooded area. Not far into the woods, there was a set of old, unused train tracks.

Beyond the trees and the train tracks, past a field of tall grass, was a river, low and flat and slow. Our black Labrador would often escape the house to run straight for the river. Once we’d find her, we’d throw rocks in for her to fetch. No matter what size rock we’d throw, she’d unfailingly come out with a rock so large that we were afraid she’d break her teeth.

There were the usual never-ending adventures of childhood: mud-pie-making and pirate games and hide-and-seek, but one of my favorite things was my bike: pink with the words “fancy dancer” winding their way through white butterflies. I taught myself to ride it by balancing myself on my white banana seat on top of the hill between two of the boulders. Determined and terrified, I’d pick up my feet and wobble-fly down the grassy hill and past the side of the house. When my front wheel was about to hit the sidewalk, I’d jerk the handlebars to the right and start pedaling without abandon, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to stop.

Having suffered a few injuries from this method, I decided something had to change. I sat on a boulder until the idea came: a seatbelt. I pulled a shoelace out of my sneaker and tied one end to the back of my seat. I sat down on the bike and brought the shoelace around my waist and tied a tight knot behind me on the other side. Confident of my new safety feature, I took a deep breath and sailed down the hill, past the house, jerked right at the sidewalk, hit a bump, and crashed.

This is when I realized that my seatbelt was, in fact, a terrible idea. Not only had I fallen, but I was now attached to my bike. When I failed to get the knot out, I did the only thing a person can do in this type of situation: I wailed for help and accepted the life lesson that not all ideas are good ones.