“Wanna Dink?” How a Rickety Second-Hand Bike Taught Us the True Meaning of Trust

Of all the moral values we treasure as mature adults, the one that easily ranks highest is trust.

Try living through an average day without trust and see how far you get.

Better still, make a list of all the people you implicitly trust throughout the course of an average day. Go on. Try it. You know what’ll happen?

You’ll end up with piece of paper so long you could wrap it around yourself until you look like The Mummy. (Good costume idea for Halloween. Make a note.)

And it’s those nearest and dearest to us who we trust most of all.

For in them we confide our deepest, darkest secrets, such as how to time-record a VCR, how to get to 100,000 on Galaga and how to write off the cost of a new sauna as a deductible.

Yet when was the all-important bedrock of trust first laid?

For those aged enough to know what an 8-track cartridge player was, the foundations of trust began decades ago with the invoking of the phrase: “Wanna dink?”

For those too young to know what an 8-track was, to dink was to ride as a passenger on a bicycle expressly designed not for that purpose.

Having accepted the kind offer of a dink from a friend or school chum, you’d either sit side-saddle on the crossbar – often with legs extended horizontally over the handlebars – or on the tiny seat itself, leaving the dinker to pedal in the upright position.

This was on boy bikes, of course.

Bikes for girls didn’t have the benefit of a crossbar, so dinking usually saw the dinkee balanced precariously on the handlebars, yelling out directions to the dinker whose forward field of vision was mostly blocked.

It was here we learnt about the trust required to put your very life into the hands of some fellow teen and their ability to operate a rickety second-hand contraption with wobbly wheels and a frame pock-marked with rust.

Through the suburban backstreets we would careen, weaving down uneven footpaths, jolting with every bump, swerving to avoid mothers and little kids, jumping over gutters and crossing roads with gay abandon, oblivious to vehicular traffic as drivers honked in furious anger.

Ringing the bell maniacally we would speed across plazas, parks and shopping strips, side-swiping fully-laden shopping carts, kicking phone booths and grazing car doors, the dents and scratches we left testament to our hare-brained joyriding.

Sometimes a grown-up would thoughtfully opine: “You stupid idiots are going to get yourselves killed!”, usually at the top of their lungs.

Truth be told, this happened rarely as people were too busy either jumping out of our way or standing very still, frozen in fear.

No parent ever condoned dinking so it had to be kept secret from them lest you got an almighty walloping that left your backside red raw for two days.

The practice only lasted until common sense and the need for self-preservation kicked in, but by that time the foundations of trust had been well-and-truly laid – along with the character-building taste for danger, all in the cause of getting home five minutes sooner.

It’s possible to see kids dinking today, though it is an uncommon sight.

And though they know it’s wrong, they are nonetheless clad in all the mandatory gear: helmets; knee pads; shin guards; elbow protectors; and various bits of body armour dictated to them by the regulations of The State.

All very sensible, of course – but at what cost?

Where’s the sense of adventure? Of fun? Of the freedom that comes with being completely reckless and  irresponsible? To disregard your own well-being as well as the well-being of others?

Ah, the bliss of ignorance. No truer phrase was ever coined.

And you can trust in that.