COEUR d'ALENE - If you put one of those cartoon thought bubbles over the head of Kristian Parrett this summer, therein would have floated a bicycle.

Fluffy white, hovering halo-like, with a big blue and silver Next Power Climber mountain bike smack in the middle while the 11-year-old mowed lawns, weeded, washed cars, watched and walked pets to earn enough to buy it.

That bicycle, with its $100 price tag, really sat at Walmart.

When Kristian visited the big box store, he would sit on the cushioned seat, feel the handlebar grip, ride the whole thing up and down the aisle a bit, then go back home and think about it all.

Even while he worked.

"Every time I'd take a break, I'd have to remember I was working toward the bike," Kristian said. "I'd have to get back to it again."

Kristian never owned a new bike - only older ones bought at yard sales, all of which he had outgrown. His summer goal was to earn enough to buy the new bike.

Any job, any price. He hated cleaning up after pets he pet sat, but loved playing with them. Lawns, weeds, washing cars, he would do the work first and let the customers - mostly neighbors - decide what it was worth upon completion.

"Excellent," neighbor Cheryl Matchett called his work, which included mowing grass, weeding, landscaping rock beds and dog sitting.

On Friday, Aug. 26, just around noon, Kristian bought the bike.

Before dinner time, it was stolen.

"I was really happy," Kristian remembered after bringing the prize home. "I wanted to give it a little ride."

So the Boy Scout and science buff pedaled one lap around his neighborhood on west Rousseau Drive, then turned south to the Kroc Community Center to pick up free school supplies during a giveaway there.

Fifteen minutes later, folders, notebooks, pencils and bag in tow, the bike was gone. In his excitement, Kristian forgot the lock, waiting innocently on his old broken-down bike at home.

Bikes are stolen all the time, almost a childhood rite of passage, so there can be lessons to learn there.

"Jerk," Kristian called the thief.

But he's working through his anger, and if Kristian could tell the crook one thing, he wouldn't swear at him, he would just ask him or her "why?"

And of all virtues we can learn, forgiveness can be the most difficult to practice.

But Kristian is getting there.

"You know," said Kristian's mom, Stacey. "I think I was more upset than he was."

And then there is turning the other check.

Kristian won't steal his own bike, he's not looking for the thief. He called police and that's that.

He said he'll look for work after school every day to save up and buy a new two-wheel ride.

Lawns, weeds, dogs, dirty cars and when it snows he'll shovel. Put that thought bubble above his head then, all those flakes falling, and it would be like the big, blue bike is the only thing in the sky.