Early summer 1980

The renovation of mom's and dad's house was finished for awhile already and they had been building up the neighborhood for a couple of years. The streets had stones already at this time (instead of the sandroads that they used to be just after we moved back in) and it was absolutely great to bike around there.
By that time I had "claimed" possession of the little orange bike of my sister. Well... ok... My sister had gotten a new one because she outgrew the little orange one and I got it, but I liked the idea better that I claimed it *g*
And I used to go out for a ride daily, because I was so proud of the bike and I liked it so much and I liked biking so much and I liked to explore the neighborhood.
So there I went, racing off on that little bike. Faster and faster, jumping up and off pavements, racing downhill and having big fun.
And then... I was almost at the end of the street, slowing down already, there was still one pavement I had to jump off and on. I didn't see any problem, geesh, why would I? I had been jumping off and on pavements for I don't know how long...
I yanked the handlebars like I always did when jumping off the pavement and next thing I knew I was lying face down on the street. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that I was down, because it was the last thing I expected to happen. I mean... geesh... me on my orange superbike, me being master of the bike... nothing could ever happen to me, especially not me falling off the bike!
But it actually happened. I was on the floor instead of jumping on to the next pavement.
I got up in a rush, checking if my bike was still ok (something I kept as a ritual in all the following 20 years that I practised the BMX sport: when ever I would fall, no matter how hard and no matter how badly bruised or wounded, I would get up first and check if my bike would be ok *grins*). How big the drama when I found out that my bike was wounded. Fatally wounded.
When I got up and turned to check on my bike I got the shock of my life... My beloved bike, the little orange superbike, had broken into two pieces. It had just broken into two pieces...
I started crying like crazy (I think it was the first time after the "ass-incident" that I cried my lungs out so much) and people must've thought that I broke something in my body, and I took a piece of the bike in both hands and started walking down the street to where my mom's best friend lived (I knew where she lived, because we came there really often). The two pieces of bike felt like two pieces of my body dying in my hands and I just couldn't stop crying.
When I got to my mom's friend I didn't even have to ring the doorbell, because she'd heard me coming from a mile away already. She looked pretty much as shocked as I looked when I saw what happened to my bike, only she had no idea what was going on. She did see the two pieces of bike in my hands, but she also thought that something was very wrong with me (which basically there was *g*).
She got on her knees right in front of my face and asked me what was wrong, what had happened.
At first I couldn't say a word, because I was crying so much still, but when I calmed down a tiny bit I managed to squeek out in between two breaths: "M'n fiets is door half." Which is literally translated "My bike is through half". And it's actually the best way to translate it anyway.
I didn't notice it at that point, but later I heard that mom's best friend had problems not to burst out laughing, because it sounded so endlessly funny. And ofcourse I had to hear this story a million times during the period of growing up.
They can laugh about it... I laugh about it, too, now. But at that very moment I felt almost like my life had ended, because I lost something that was so dear to me, something that I was so proud of and of which I thought it would never break or would never disappear out of my life.