In Which Our Author's Son Enters, And Wins, His First Motorsports Event
I think it's safe to say that there are two primary types of terrible, pushy fathers: the kind that wants his son to have a more perfect version of his own life ("He'll get that spelling-bee championship that fate denied me!") and the kind that wants his son to have a completely different life ("I don't even know what a violin is, but my son will be first chair in New York!")
You can put me in the latter camp, but that doesn't explain how I came to spend the day before Easter watching my son ruin the afternoon for an entire family of non-disadvantaged minorities, does it?
It's been a miserable, sickly week. How bad? So bad that there's a sportbike with my name on it sitting on a loading dock fourteen miles from your house and I just don't feel like I can get the thing. That bad. But with a belt-and-braces course of medication for bronchitis and some qualified medical advice ("Don't cough directly on your son") I still felt adequate to the task of hanging out with my clone for the weekend. The only question was: what to do? John is forty-seven inches tall now which made me think --- hey, I could sneak him into the junior go-karts at one of the indoor places. No such luck; they all require a minimum age of eight, and John is still five.
So my next thought was to buy him a 50cc motorcycle so he could do some amazing white-trash stunting without his mother finding out. Problem with that idea was that I didn't feel like standing outside for more than about ten minutes.
Luckily, Grand Prix Karting has a kart course set up for children ages 4-7, so we headed over there. For ten bucks, John could "race" twice, using an electric kart with a relatively upright seating position and hand controls. I thought he'd enjoy it, and he was really excited about the idea.
But we weren't alone.
As John started to pick out his helmet, this frankly massive black fellow came over with his three children and said, "We're going to race you. I hope you're okay with the fact that my son is very competitive." Amazingly enough, they were all wearing BMX race-related clothing, so I thought maybe I could defuse it.
"BMX, hey! You know, I used to do a little bit of that..."
"My children are state champions, in Expert." And then the dad gave me a look up and down that clearly indicated his complete lack of belief in any BMX-related statements I could possibly make, so I didn't bother.
Okay. Time to get the two kids settled in for their race. Note the difference in family pressure...
John tried talking to the other kid, but his family was exhorting him to keep the competitive mindset.
"We need to have a clean start," the other dad said, and insisted that the two girls working the course turn the switches of the two karts on at exactly the same time.
Which they did, and Competitive Kid's hand slipped off the grip.
So the dad raised a fuss and they actually pulled the two children back for a restart! At this point I was starting to feel a little bit competitive myself, but I also liked the idea of us leaving the dirty-ass East Side of Columbus alive, so I said nothing.
Then came the restart...
...and the kid slipped his grip again...
...but John was on the move and not to be denied. "GOOOOOO!!!!!!!" the father screamed. It made the kid freak out and slip his hand again. Now John had clear air and was gapping him like Lewis Hamilton always manages to gap the low-testosterone Rosberg on the restarts.
"WE NEED TO HELP OUR BOY!" the father yelled, and they started basically shoving the kid around, trying to get him to steer and apply throttle at the same time. Finally, two laps later, the kid appeared competent to operate the kart. But John was lining him up for the lap...
"YOU'RE LETTING HIM LAP YOU!" the dad yelled. Two turns later, John made it stick with a nice move directly into the wall.
"Five laps to go!" came the call from the girl working start/finish.
"Who's winning?" John yelled as we went by the flag station. The father glared at me.
"Well, honey, everybody's a winner in this case..."
"But who's winning the actual race, me or him?"
"Well, I think he had trouble starting..."
"I think I'm winning the race, Daddy, now look, I can win with one hand!" And he proceeded to drive the rest of the race one-handed while waving at the crowd and saying, again and again, each time he went by start/finish, "We need to know who the winner is!"
At the end, the father literally snatched his poor son out of the seat so hard that the kid made an odd squeaking sound. They ran out and refused to give the start/finish girl their payment ticket. They also left the child's dirty, worn-out jean jacket behind. I counted myself lucky that the guy didn't pop me once in the face on the way out; even had I not been running a fever I was no match for a 6'5", 320-plus-pound monster who was feeling distinctly humiliated by circumstances.
John waved his first victory flag...
and high-fived the grid girl.
"Do you want to drive again?" I asked him.
"I really do," he replied, "but this time it's just for practice because there's nobody left to beat. Also, Daddy, I learned that it's easiest to pass another car when you bump them a bit first." The minute he said that, I half expected John Lindsey and Ryan Flaherty from NASA to rappel from the ceiling and knock me down another space on the 2007 National Championship podium. And so he ran his practice laps, and I watched him figure out how to deal with throttle-induced understeer on a relatively slick surface, and then he went home to his mommy's house and drew pictures of the karts and the racetrack and his great victory. He insisted on keeping his headsock as a trophy.
Every day I'm in less and less doubt about his actual paternity.
The question is what to do now. He's two years and a month away from being able to race the "junior karts" at an indoor place, although K1 supposedly will let 7 years olds run. I suppose I'd better start looking into a proper outdoor kart for him, right? But what if he really has a talent for it? Isn't it unnecessarily cruel to get a child started on an activity that requires cubic dollars ($50k for a junior kart year up to $2.2m for a season in Formula BMW) when the requisite cubic dollars won't be forthcoming?
Maybe he'll just forget about it.
Maybe not.