NAPERVILLE, IL — Glenn Tasker, 41, successfully taught his son Oliver, 6, to ride a bike without training wheels Saturday afternoon, then excused himself to the laundry room, where he stood silently over a basket of unsorted darks for nearly eleven minutes.

Witnesses confirm Oliver completed three full laps of the Tasker driveway unassisted before Glenn jogged back to the garage under the stated pretense of returning a bicycle pump to its proper hook, a pump that had been resting on the correct hook the entire time.

“I heard the dryer running, which was weird because I hadn’t started the dryer,” said Glenn’s wife, Renee Tasker, 39. “When I opened the door he said he had something in his eye. Both eyes.”

Glenn later rejoined the family on the driveway, where Oliver continued practicing turns, unaware that his father had spent the interim interval processing the full weight of human transience while leaning against a lint trap.

“He didn’t need me anymore. Just like that. He was just… going.”

Glenn insisted he was fine and suggested the family get ice cream, a proposal he delivered in a voice approximately two registers higher than normal. He then spent the walk to the minivan explaining, to no one in particular, that it had been a long week.

Oliver, for his part, asked if he could get sprinkles and has no memory of the emotional breakthrough that occurred twelve feet away from him.

At press time, Glenn had located Oliver’s first pair of shoes in a closet bin and was asking Renee if they still made that size.