Trigger - the exercise bike by Peg Pyner

          If there's one thing I don't need in my life it's more fantasy. For this reason I wish Barbie would stop tethering up my bike.
          I got an exercise bike at Sears mostly because I thought the bike would be good for my sore knee and I used to love biking and even biking standing still is more fun than lying on my floor flapping my legs. Jimmy calls those exercises "my roly-polys" and I suspect that bike riding has more dignity. I quickly discovered that it was fun to bike while watching TV so the bike isn't banished to the spare room anymore. It sits in the living room and is hurriedly whisked from sight if anyone real comes.
          Nancy and Barbie giggled a bit and said wouldn't it be fun if they removed the little bar from under the wheel so the tire would touch the floor. When I got on and started pedaling I'd go whizzing across the floor, through the big picture window and over the sundeck twelve feet down to the ground. Silliness I can take from the young and I ignored it.
         Barbie had no right to start patting the bike and saying, "Whoa there, Trigger. Whoa, boy." She had absolutely no right to get a rope and tie the bike to the chesterfield. "You don't want it stomping all over your living room," she said.
          She had no right to keep putting plants in front of it and accusing me of starving the thing. "Barbie!" I screamed, "I have enough fantasy in my life. I don't want my bike turned into a horse."
          I am a stolid, ordinary kind of person. I frizz not my hair madly, I dye it not blond, I flit not through misty meadows clad in wispy robes of white. I am sensible, down to earth, the kind they call a good, plain homebody, although with my hair just done I'm not all that plain. I do believe I look kindly and practical.
          I never invented all the mad stuff that goes on in this community. It's all true and I'm absolutely terrified that Barbie can take this ordinary bike and turn it into a horse. I'm resisting this fantasy with every atom of my being.
          Now I need to take this column over to the newspaper office. I hope it will clarify matters for those who think they hear whinnying from our front room. And on the way back I'll pick up a sack of oats for Trigger. I haven't got a plant left in the place.