Ever since my son has reached the size of an adult, things have gotten more complicated. We can’t get away with a lot of the things we used to take for granted when he was child-sized. Like child-priced tickets at the movie theater, or kids’ meals when we eat out, or shopping in the boys’ section of the stores. This weekend, we got to experience another big bummer on the trip towards his adulthood. We went bike shopping.

In years past, the child has been easily guided towards the item we want him to have. You know how it’s done. You line up the options you’ve selected for him and let him pick one. You’re guaranteed that he’ll chose one you’ve already approved and he gets a sense of participation in the decision making. It’s win-win.

Fast forward to thirteen and that just doesn’t fly anymore. For one thing, the child is five foot, seven inches tall (and that’s quickly increasing) and weighs about 120 lbs. He’s bigger than most of his friends’ mothers (but not me, yet, I still have two inches on him and a umm, few pounds on him, too). So, it’s already a given that cheap is out. He has to have a full, adult sized bike.

We live in Minnesota, where you can get five months of biking weather, if you push it to the outer limit on either end of the season. The joke here is, What do Minnesotans do during the summer?….Well, if it falls on a weekend, they have a picnic! See? Pathetic. So, we really don’t go to the specialty stores for high-end bicycles for our kids, or for ourselves, to go biking on the paved trails that meander through the forest preserves in our suburban development. We shop at Wal Mart, and Target and Fleet Farm (Yes, Fleet Farm, do you have those near you? They’re still a big, eye-bulging novelty for me.), and Toys R Us for the little kid bikes.

We went away unimpressed, from Wal Mart and Fleet Farm, but at Target on Sunday, things got interesting. There were a bunch of bikes that looked structurally decent and were very reasonably priced. But, there was also the Holy Grail of bikes. This one was more than we wanted to spend by a lot, and more bike that our kid would use, by a whole lot. We just couldn’t justify spending that much money on all that superfluous gadgetry. We live among the Jonses, so I know that around here, people wouldn’t even bat an eye at spending as much as what this bike cost. Actually, they’d probably shop for their kid’s bike at Penn Cycle and then spend as much as this bike cost on extras for the Penn Cycle bike—like a deluxe helmet, special riding sunglasses, gloves, wrist bands and who the hell knows what. But, I tell you in all honesty that if the children around here have $500 bikes, they don’t look like they get their money’s worth out of them, if you know what I mean.

We tried to compromise. We looked over the bikes, found a few that we’d be willing to buy, took the price of those and told him that was the amount we were willing to spend. We said that anything over that would have to come out of his money. Sounds good, right? Logical, even-headed parenting.

At first he balked. He’s saving up for a Razr phone and will have the money at the end of the week. So, he sat there and calculated whether he could pay the extra for this bike and then save up enough again in a reasonable amount of time for the Razr.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s get it.”

This was our first departure from level headedness and fairness and into the realm of “imperfect”.

“No,” I said. “That’s a LOT of money to spend on an impulse like this (we were talking about $90 from his savings). You’ve been saving for that Razr for a while, and this bike is way more than you need.” I then went on to explain that I understand this early teen need for stuff and that his friends will see him with the Razr phone, but they don’t ride bikes with him, so he doesn’t need to be socially competitive with that. I know, here’s ME talking my kid out of a bike and into a cell phone. We were all suffering from Mad Shopper Syndrome at that point.

He wouldn’t budge. He wanted the bike. We don’t want him to get that one. So, we told him to think about it for a few days and if he still wants to do that with his money, we’ll come back to get it. And, we will. But, I don’t want him to get home after spending that much money and then regret it. That’s a LOT of money to regret blowing on something you could get for free (because your parents would buy you a different model).

This was the moment when my thirteen year-old son turned into a three year-old in the middle of Target. He began to cry.

“We’ve been out shopping for a bike ALL WEEKEND LONG,” he said, “And I’m not leaving here without a bike! It’s not fair!”

Husband and I took turns cornering him into isolated aisles and whisper-yelling at him about his behavior. Finally, the child got a grip on himself, dried his tears and returned to the bike section.

“OK, get me whatever you want, I don’t care. Just pick one, any one and let’s be done with it and get out of here. I wasted my whole weekend on this, I just want to get a bike and go home.”

I slid a little further into imperfection and said, “No. We’re not getting a bike today at all.”

Again, this is a LOT of money coming out of our pockets and I don’t want to get the bike home and have him insist that he hates it and never wants to ride it and how if we’d let him spend his own money on the bike he wanted, like we said we would (and then lied about—see, I know how these things get twisted around), then he’d ride his bike. So, we were in a lose-lose situation. The opposite of what shopping for the boy was like when he was 7.

Now, it’s Monday and after enduring the most horrible car ride home from Target ever (I assure you, screaming babies and tantrumming toddlers had nothing on this ride), I know we made the right decision. Because none of us knows what the hell to do about the bike. Any choice we would have made in that Target would have been a bad one. But, we don’t know what the right choice is. Any of us! We have been round and round this topic, calmly and logically and we don’t know what to do.

The bike he wants is more bike than he needs or would use. But, it’s a really good bike (especially for the price), and he could use it into adulthood. But, will he really want to? He’ll likely only ride this bike for another two years (in the summers) until he gets his learner’s permit for driving. Who rides a bike when you can drive a car? So, then we’re looking at him really not riding it until college. That’s how it was in my circle anyway. And is he really going to want this bike, that he’s had since he was thirteen, at that point? Or will he want a new one then anyway? Would it be better to buy him a cheaper costing and cheaper made bike now and then just get him another when he’s older? Either way, it’s going to cost us the same, since we agreed to spend X amount of dollars on a bike and he can supplement with more if he wants to get this expensive bike, or just say THANKS and get the one we’ll pay for. But, these are the things that he, himself, is tossing around in his head (proving that we were right to not buy anything yesterday), and we should guide him with it.

What to do?

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