The Most Dangerous Moment

The Most Dangerous Moment

J. R. BEALL

THERE ARE THOSE among the uninitiated who believe that motorcycling is a hazardous sport. Some, I have heard, compare it to going over Niagara Falls in a badminton net. Well, they are right, but not in the way that they imagine. It is true that there is nothing on earth so frought with peril as “the most dangerous moment,” and those of us who have gone through it wear its invisible scars upon our memories. I have seen strong men break out in a cold sweat at the merest mention of it, and many a potential enthusiast has recoiled from its challenge and relegated himself forever to the undistinguished ranks of the “four wheeled driver.” This most terrible “moment of truth,” to which I refer, is that time when you inform your wife that you are going to buy a motorcycle.

Spring is the usual time to buy a new bike, and winter is the time which I have traditionally spent trying to convince my wife of the necessity and good sense of the proposed purchase. Indeed, time was. when I used to worry away the whole winter evolving complicated, sometimes even brilliant strategies to achieve this end. Looking back through the years, I remember many a sleepless night, and many a furrow of perplexity across my noble brow, all brought on by the magnanimity of this problem. It is with compassion for you who may be neophytes in the sport, that I shall present here some of my best plans and strategies, in hopes that you will be spared the bitter taste of defeat which I have suffered as the result of their failure.

The first motorcycle, like the first million, is the most difficult. I remember the weeks of chilling silence that followed my first blunt, naive announcement of my intentions tô buy a cycle. Less determined men might have given up in defeat, but I was strong, and weathered it through with hurt dignity, and finally by promising to do all the dishes for the next five years, I gained the consent of my merciful wife.

The next year, I was craftier; I started laying plans weeks in advance. I dropped innocent little remarks, calculated to set the stage for the final moment. I would say, “Boy, that bike sure needs an expensive overhaul,” or “My mileage certainly isn’t what it used to be,” or “I don’t see how I can take you to the store tonight, dear; I’ve got to work on my engine.” Well, this had an effect, all right. She figured out just what was coming, and shot me down on the first sally. Needless to say, I wasn’t riding a new machine that year.

The following winter I started my plotting right after Christmas, but not a word, not a hint of what I was contriving, did I breathe. I figured that by going without lunches, cigarettes or haircuts for the next six months, I could save most of the money I needed. After three months of this I looked like Ben Gunn and was threatened with abrupt unemployment. Strangers stopped me on the streets to peer sympathetically into my haggard faoe and press a coin into my hand. Obviously, this could not go on. I told my wife the whole sordid story and for once, truth triumphed and she gave in. Of course I was pledged to another five years of dish washing, but by this time I was used to it.

The next time the “new bike bug” bit me was a couple of years later and I started my campaign on Thanksgiving. It seemed to me then that logic and common sense coupled with good arguments and motives must surely prevail. I started my active campaign immediately, and the house reverberated with my sparkling oratory. My clear, concise, well-thought-out arguments were exceeded in quality only by my winning personality and my friendly, straight-forward attitude. I made the Rover Boys look like a branch of the Mafia by comparison. As I look back on that time, I often regret that I had not been seeking public office, for I should certainly have succeeded. Well, as you might have guessed, my machinations were, as usual, something less than a howling success. My wife seems to have the peculiar ability to overlook completely the good side of me, seeing me only as she knows I really am. It was then that I discovered an ageless truth — that women are about as much affected by logic as a duck is by a light fog.

I could go on here listing the shameful accounts of countless strategic defeats, but I know you are burning to hear what, if anything, I have learned from all this painful experience. And so I will now impart to you the secrets of my current success in buying motorcycles as often as I like. I have discovered that the simple direct approach is still the best. No weeks of fearful anxiety need precede it and, in the end, it is just as successful as any plot that the average guy might hatch. Perhaps a master implementer like Richelieu could have brought it off, but then he wasn’t married anyway and no one had heard of a motorcycle in his time. Nowadays I simply say to my wife, “I’m buying a new motorcycle next week, and if you don’t like it you can just lump it.” I then close the door to her bedroom and quietly retire to my bedroom for a good, peaceful night’s sleep. •