Similarities Between 'You Are Your Bike And Dearly Disconnected'

Never the Same

Change is inevitable. Despite one’s best efforts, things will never remain the same. Everything in the world is in a constant state of unrest. This idea is the spotlight of the essays “You Are Your Bike”, by Mary Roach, and “Dearly Disconnected”, by Ian Frazier in which both of these authors experience change in their own way. Each of these essays describes the formation of a relationship with an inanimate object that eventually becomes obsolete, but is never forgotten as they played a crucial role in the lives of the authors.

In “You Are Your Bike”, Mary Roach forms a deep connection with the Sting-Ray bike she had as a child. She spent countless hours biking alongside her friends, creating memories that she will cherish

forever. Similarly, Ian Frazier also formed an immeasurable bond with an everyday object. To him, a simple payphone that would hardly be noticed by most serves as a landmark. This specific payphone is what brought him and his wife together. While Mary sees the bike as the end of the part of her life that she considers to be her “tomboy years” (274), Ian sees this payphone as the beginning of a new chapter in his as he starts his family. These are just a couple of examples indicating how ordinary people connect with inanimate objects every day. For them, simply seeing a Sting-Ray bike or an abandoned payphone can stir up intense feelings of nostalgia. However, no good thing can last forever.
For Mary, her beloved Sting-Ray bike was eventually replaced with a more practical 10-speed bike.

Not because she no longer cared for the Sting-Ray, simply because it ceased to satisfy her needs. As a child, she wanted something that would impress her friends. It was shiny, sleek, and fast, which made it the perfect ride for any young individual. As she grew older, she realized that being fast and pretty were no longer the most important factors. She let go of this once precious possession to better suit her lifestyle. Ian, on the other hand, did not let go of his attachment. Rather, everyone around him did. While he still had an intense bond with the payphone, society traded up to the more convenient cell phone. Cell phones have caused pay phones to be seen as undesirable and useless, which has resulted in the scarcity of pay phones all together. He compares their relationship to that of siblings in the quote “ the pay phone is to the cell phone as the troubled and difficult older sibling is to the cherished newborn”, meaning that most people pay them little to no attention at all after the are exposed to the next best thing(376). That is not to say however, that they should be forgotten about

altogether.
Quite the contrary, it is the things that shape the lives of each individual that should be remembered with the most emphasis.

The things that are life altering, the things that act as deciders of fate, those are the things that are most precious. These objects are found by people every single day, whether they realize it at the time or not. They are the things people hope to run across again. “I’ve long had the fantasy that I’ll come across a gold, glitter-seat Sting-Ray at a local flea market” (Roach 274). They are the things that people show to their children, hoping that they too will connect with them, although they rarely do. “…we made a special detour to Sarasota to show them the pay phone. It didn’t impress them much” (Frazier 375). They are the things that cannot be taken by anybody. They often seem as if they are fleeting, but they are, in fact,

everlasting.
Forming these relationships is crucial, despite the fact that the objects often become obsolete, because they are the things that well never be forgotten. As Frazier states, “Bygone passions should always have an address” (377). Indeed, they do. In the hearts of every person in the world.