The Bicycle Bell

I bought a bell for my bike for three dollars at a hardware store. It's shaped like a ladybug. Its ring is ridiculously cheerful.

I use it maybe forty times a day on my ride to work, mostly to say hello. Kids wave back. Old men on benches lift their coffee cups. A woman walking her dog every morning at the same corner now rings an imaginary bell back at me with her finger in the air.

Last week a little boy on a scooter asked where I got it, and his dad bought him the same ladybug the next day. Now there are two of us ringing along Harmon Street.

It's the smallest thing. But my commute used to feel like something to get through, and now it feels like a parade. One ladybug, forty hellos, every single day.