Example Number One

Coming down the hill in the opposite direction was another biker. I was in the middle of giving him the "way-to-go-saving-the-environment-and-getting-exercise-on-your-bike" head bob, when I noticed something wrong. Two things, actually. First, he rolled right through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. The same stop sign that I had stopped long enough to look up to notice my fellow two-wheeler. Second, he wasn't wearing a helmet.
It was probably more of an issue for me now, since my son had recently had his own close encounter with the rules of the road and the importance of proper head protection. His experience left him shaken but not stirred, and his helmeted head ended up doing more damage to the car than it did to him. The rules of the road have been impressed no him in a very visceral way.
Long before my son's feet could reach the pedals, I had my own awakening at the very intersection I watched the helmet-less guy roll through. I got a ticket on that hill for running a stop sign. A motorcycle cop was watching from the left as I roared past the red reminder of safety. I heard his much larger bike start up and he caught up to me in less than a block. Feeling a range of emotions from shock to bitterness, I pulled my bike to the curb.
"You know you ran that stop sign back there?" the officer asked rhetorically.
"Yeah. Well. I was on my way to school and," and that's when I decided to stop arguing and realized that I had no leg or kickstand on which to stand. He wrote me a ticket. I signed it. I took it with me to school where I began to fume at any of my colleagues who would listen.
I was stopped in mid-rant by my mentor teacher, the one who had helped me navigate much of my first year in public education. "You didn't stop, did you?"
"No," I replied, full-on sheepish.
"And you weren't wearing a helmet?"
I didn't see that one coming. She must have noticed my comings and goings for months prior, but said nothing about it. Why was she kicking me while I was down?
"It's only a two-mile ride, and it's mostly side streets," I sputtered in defense.
"You're modeling for kids. They see you come and go every day. You wouldn't want them riding around the streets of Oakland without helmets, would you?"
"No."
Conversation and lesson over. Since that morning I have worn a helmet and stopped at that stop sign in particular, along with all of its many brethren. I'm not just filling heads with knowledge. I'm protecting them from possible damage. Lesson learned. For me, anyway.