history
Detail of the riverwalk along the Chicago River, including murals saying “YOU ARE ON POTAWATOMI LAND.” Photo by the author.
“Did you really teach Katie Ledecky how to ride a bike?”
For a few years, I coordinated a high school social action program, and junior and senior students committed to volunteer at a single site for the entire year. While we’d been sending students to a handful of sites for decades, we frequently established new partnerships to respond to the changing needs of our community and to diversify offerings for our students. One of the partnerships I established is with Bikes for the World, which sends donated bicycles to locations all over the world to empower people with an accessible means of transportation. Our students worked with the organization's mechanic to perform minor repairs and basic maintenance before preparing the bikes for shipment.
In 2012, 15 year old Katie Ledecky wowed the world with her performance in the 800 meter freestyle and earned a Gold Medal in her Olympic debut. She would go on to collect quite a stash of medals, break record after record, and be described by peers, journalists, and fans alike as one of the greatest athletes of all time, but, first, she needed to finish high school. I bumped into Katie and her mom when they came to campus for a couple of meetings to prepare for a Junior year amidst a swell of attention and scrutiny. Coming around the corner, I was delighted to see her and have a chance to congratulate her, and as her mom chatted with a couple of my colleagues, Katie turned to me, “I have a question about my social action placement.” Does she need to change it? Is there a problem? Does her new celebrity means she’s not doing social action anymore? Does she need to cut out early to train?
“Can you tell me about Bikes for the World? What will I be doing there?” I talked about the mission of the organization with particular enthusiasm - this was a new partnership, and Katie would be part of the first cohort of student volunteers from our school. “You’ll be trained as an assistant bike mechanic to get donations ready to ship to different places around the world.” Her face softened slightly, “Oh...so I won’t have to...ride a bike?” I was puzzled. “Katie’s been so worried about this,” her mom said, leaning in with a smile, “she doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle.” We all laughed at the irony - she was an Olympic Gold Medalist, a rising star, on her way to being one of the greats, but she couldn’t ride a bike. “Katie,” I said with exaggerated generosity, “you just tell me when, and I’ll be happy to teach you how to ride a bike.” We all laughed again, talked about the quickly approaching start of the school year, and said goodbye.
Katie Ledecky can’t ride a bike, I mumbled to myself as I entered my office, but my reaction shifted from amusement to wonder. She accomplished an extraordinary physical feat at a young age, and the world was watching her, following her, cheering for her. But she was worried that her inability to ride a bike, apparently her only athletic deficiency, was going to make her a bad volunteer. Unlike many other students who requested new assignments because of varying levels of discomfort or disinterest, Katie was keenly aware of what the program was all about, what her role would be, and what she could or couldn’t give. And unlike those other students, she didn’t even ask or consider asking for a different site. It was one of those moments that most teachers have - a quick, fleeting, seemingly unimportant interaction with a student in which a teacher suddenly understands the things that are fueling her, the values at her core. That moment with Katie revealed to me that, despite all the attention and applause, she was holding on to being a person. Given the option, she chose humility and generosity over privilege.
“Katie Ledecky just won an Olympic Gold Medal, and she’s worried that she can’t ride a bike?” My mother laughed with joyful shock when I recounted my offer to teach her. The story made it into her rotation of timely conversation topics, and within a couple of weeks, I started getting surprised and delighted queries from siblings and niblings. “Isn’t that amazing,” I’d say, affirming the rumor, “She’d just won the Gold and she was more focused on her service project.” They’d laugh and mutter, “I can’t believe she can’t ride a bike.” In the last few months, three people have asked me, “Is it true? Did you really teach Katie Ledecky how to ride a bike?”
Somewhere along the way, someone added the element of completion, suggesting that Katie took me up on my offer. No, she did not. But that wasn’t the point of the story, was it? It wasn’t the point of mine - I told the story with the hope that others would see what I saw: humility and generosity trumping privilege, an insight into and an inspiration for being human, for becoming our best selves. Maybe the proximity to celebrity, to an extraordinary feat was too tantalizing to be restrained by the facts. Maybe the story wasn’t strong or memorable enough without a rousing conclusion à la Gloria Upson (“And I stepped on the ping-pong ball...well, it was just ghastly.” #AuntieMame). But...maybe I didn’t tell it well enough in the first place. Maybe I didn’t anticipate how the story would spread, how it would twist and turn and pick up any believable element, factual or not. Maybe I should’ve copyrighted the story and demand that its retelling begin with: “This is a story about humility and generosity.”
In the last couple of years, I’ve heard various versions of the same insight that we’re witnessing history, that it’s not hyperbole to suggest that these are extraordinary times that will profoundly shape the future of our species and our planet. The initial spread of and fumbled response to the pandemic. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The US election and the ensuing insurrection. Accelerating climate change. Expansion of extremism around the world. Rapidly widening distance between the richest and the poorest and fantastically disproportionate access to vital resources. Breathe. Breathe. What I don’t hear enough is another insight that this moment in history is revealing: history doesn’t just happen, time doesn’t do all the work, nothing is certain or determined, and it’s not just the extraordinary event or trauma or grief that shape the future. The future will be forged from the ordinary choices we make (intimate and ultimate, individually and collectively) and the questions we ask (of the world, of others, and most importantly of ourselves).
These probably are times that will be examined thoroughly by historians, anthropologists, and philosophers looking for clues for understanding just what the hell happened in 2020 and how well (and how poorly) we responded to its challenges and its opportunities. When they reconstruct life in the 21st century, Katie Ledecky’s name will be on the rosters of extraordinary people, but I hope those future thinkers recognize that her power was rooted in her very ordinary humanity. Maybe her humility will catch on, and we’ll start to recognize the ways we subject others to extraordinary expectations. Maybe we’ll start enabling each other to be our best selves without expecting each other to be perfect or destroying and degrading each other for our deficiencies. Maybe we’ll be able to be kinder to ourselves and to each other. I mean, hey, even Katie Ledecky couldn’t ride a bike.
