1983. Mongoose.

My first proper bike. I'd had other kid's bicycles but this was my first real bmx bike. It was so sweet. Huffy's and Schwinn's were for pussies. If you were a badass you rode a GT, Diamondback, or a Mongoose. I rode a Mongoose because i really loved Riki Tiki Tavi and he was a Mongoose. I may have been a badass but i was only eight. I saved money from chores and odd jobs to buy it. Not sure how much it cost but I think it was almost two hundred dollars. I rode that bike everywhere and jumped it off anything with an incline. Usually I crashed as many jumps as I landed but that bike was tough. One night my dad went to go buy beer and I left my bike behind his car and he ran over it. He was pissed and kicked me in the ass really hard while I was watching the Fall Guy. But the Mongoose was car proof. I got hit by a car and crashed into two parked cars also so that's a total of four times the Mongoose beat an automobile. This kid named Chris stole my bike but his parents made him bring it back to our house. I punched him in the face in front of both of our parents. No punishment was given to me. I learned two lessons from that. Sometimes people deserved to be punched in the face, and kids don't lock their bikes up so you can steal them and fence them to older Vietnamese kids for some quick cash.