Any day now my husband and I are going to become Real Grown-Ups.

Like the kind with actual jobs and mortgages and I don’t know, balanced meals and stuff. We’re on year AHEM of our one-income, student-loan-receiving, renting-instead-of-owning married life, and yearn for the day when we’ll walk straight past the generic mac-and-cheese and load up our grocery carts with actual, bona fide Kraft Dinner. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

So last summer when my (then 3-year-old) son Noah was bequeathed a free bicycle from a generous friend whose son had outgrown it, I was stoked.

A free bicycle! That we didn’t have to pay for! That he could ride! And did I mention it was free!?

Noah was also stoked about his new wheels … for about 45 seconds. Then during the 46th second, he noticed that the bike was missing a most crucial component: a bell.

The shiny silver bell that had lived on his trusty Radio Flyer tricycle had been, let’s face it, the pièce de résistance of that riding toy, and while losing a wheel was cool and all, losing the ability to herald his arrival wherever he went with a tympanic-membrane-piercing BRRRRIIIINNNNGGG was most definitely not.

Luckily, I am wily (a highly useful trait for parenting, as it turns out), and quickly suggested a fun outing wherein we would find him a new bell that he could pick out himself. One that was probably even louder than his old one!

Wouldn’t that be awesome? (See that right there? WILY.) And so with enthusiasm restored, we headed out to purchase a bell. And wouldn’t you know, we found the best bell ever.

Photos: Rachel Reiff Ellis

Who’s the coolest kid on the block? The one with the “I Love My Mom” bell! Am I right? HIGH FIVE! As soon as he upgrades that ride to one with four wheels and a motor, we’re totally getting the bumper sticker!

Future therapy sessions aside, he truly did love that crazy bell. Mostly, I suspect, because he noticed how it made me chuckle every time I saw it.

And so it stayed atop his new big kid bicycle, alerting other sidewalk dwellers of his shenanigans for a little over a year, right up until a few months ago when the bottom fell out of the sky and I started to think I had pretty awesome foresight to name someone in my house Noah.

The days-on-end rain and humidity did its deed on the bell’s sticker, and during an outing on one of the drier days, it fell off mid-ride, lost among the piles of moldy leaves.

Devastated, Noah retraced his tracks to find it, but to no avail.

In an attempt to cheer him up, my husband off-handedly suggested that maybe Noah could make a new sticker himself, wouldn’t that be even more awesome than the old sticker, etc. (Fortunately he is also a carrier for the Wily gene), and SHAZAM, Noah perked right up.

Get me my art supplies POST HASTE!, he (would have) said (if he knew what “post haste” meant) as he fervently began his project.

Maybe if we were Real Grown-Ups, we would have had enough money to buy a brand new bike with a platinum-coated, laser-blasting, bomb-diggity bell. Instead, we got this:

Which I happen to prefer, I don’t know, maybe a JILLION times more.

Because what it led to was this: a small boy riding his tiny dirt bike down the sidewalks of Decatur with paper and tape atop his handlebar bell, big enough to ride but not yet old enough to be ashamed to tell you in plain black crayon that he loves his mama.

I’ll eat the generic mac-and-cheese for that.

Rachel Reiff Ellis lives in Decatur with her husband and two kids, Noah, who is 5 and Rosie, a fiesty 1-year-old whose hair looks pretty much exactly like David Bowie’s. She writes about her experiences with the inanity and absurdity that is parenthood at www.yestertimeblog.com.