When I was a child I had inner ear problems. My sister and I both had bikes and mum and dad taught us at the same time. My sister was riding free within a week -.-. I could ride with training wheels on but couldn't get my balance with them off. My dad would hold the bike, let me pedal for a bit, give a push and let go. I would promptly tip over and eat gravel. After about a month, my parents realised something was wrong. They took me to a paedeotrician who looked at my ears and I had a buildup of fluid behind my eardrums that was preventing my sense of balance from calibrating properly. I could walk fine, but anytime my balance required something other than my feet I couldn't get it right.

I had to have grommits (little plastic hourglass shaped things with a hole in the middle) set into my eardrums to drain the fluid. I wasn't allowed to swim with them in (middle of summer in Australia, sheesh all we did as kids was swim) unless i stoppered my ears full of wax otherwise water would go in the wrong way. Eventually the grommits fell out of their own accord when their job was done, but one eardrum didn't repair itself and left a hole. Then I had to have surgery to take a piece of skin from the back of my earlobe and have it stitched over the eardrum to seal it. Still have a little scar behind my ear and when i got my ears pierced, the right one had to be a little crooked or it would pass through the scar.

So in the end it was like a year later that my ears were fixed and I just never learnt to ride the bike. /end childhood story.