MORONEY
Little Dillon , proud to be a Kee Wee Rider
Words : Roger Moroney
S o I calmly asked my three-year-old grandson , Dillon , what ’ s got two wheels ? “ Bike ” he replied immediately . I was already prouder of him than I had been . “ Quite right ,” I sort of huffed ( as grandfathers with motorcycling “ escapades ” would do ) before slipping into a worthless , pointless , meaningless and fruitless attempt at coming up with something intellectually verbal to impress the little chap . I can just hear the dear editor now remarking , “ Could never happen ... we know you too well ”. However , back to the verbal jousting with our chirpy grandlad . I declared that we , the human beings , are like motorbikes , because we all move as best we can and we all have engines and other essential parts . “ You have an engine that makes you go ,” I said pompously . “ Do you know what it is called ... the engine that helps make you run well ?” The little man sort of frowned and replied
“ my bum ... my bum makes me go .” The best I could reply was some nonsense about exhaust fumes , but by then he had wandered off to taunt the cat . “ It ’ s your heart ,” I called to him , but his interest had waned ... until I told him we bought him a motorbike . He had seen his sister and cousins darting about on my little PeeWee 50 , which I drag out from time to time and when he watched them you could tell by the look in his eyes that he wished he could climb aboard and try and wreck the thing . One of these days he will be big enough to turn the throttle and demolish the daisies , but until that day he has his little starter package ( which we found in an Op shop ) to scoot about on . Literally . It ’ s a smart little job , which quickly had me applying grey paint to the plastic cooling fins and applied some foil to a circular slice of cardboard and created a headlight . Also found old bicycle reflectors and one of those
80 KIWI RIDER