RC Car Rite of Passage for My Son
The recent Wired article by Rhett Allain, “Three Science Words We Should Stop Using,” highlights it for me again: the importance of models in the lives of children. The enemy of the ability to play with a model is the linear, “realistic,” literal interpretation of being—what niggas of all skin colors have been calling “keeping it real.” The problem with keeping it real is when you can really have a thing you will have nothing. Having a model of something (or some system) means you have a little voodoo doll—a small-scale version of the larger “real” thing. For those readers who claim white-Jesus Christianity, remember how David fought lions before he fought great armies.
So I say all that to say that I got my son—quite by “chance”—a 1/10 scale electric car. This is not a “toy” car. This is a model of a real battery-powered car, shrunk down to 1/10 scale. This car is meant to be rebuilt from scratch. My son can play with it like a toy but eventually he will break it (actually his mother broke it first). When the car is broken he (with a little bit of help from me) will have to repair the car—just like a real car: “Why can’t I play with my car, Daddy?” I answer: ‘We’re waiting on replacement parts, son.”
I say this whole series of events happened “by chance” because it was my son that asked me for a remote controlled car. I immediately cringed at the vision of a single piece of petroleum-based plastic with some wheels and an antenna sticking out—the kind of crap sold at Toys-R-Us—the kind of crap (I am sorry to say) single mothers cynically/ignorantly buy for their little boys. I want my son to have some man-shit! I don’t mean a remote controlled car that goes out and knocks over liquor stores and rapes women. I mean my 10-year-old son needs to be involved in activities that give him constructive skills that he can use for the rest of life. He should not always have toys that just distract him and entertain him. I am always looking out for opportunities like that… (by the way, I look out the same way for my daughter—and her shit is usually more expensive)…
And let me say, by the way, that I must commend the mothers of my two youngest children for allowing me to participate this way in my children’s lives. I know for horrible fact that there are many self-described feminists out there who would find it hard to believe that a mother would actually prevent a father from being involved—out of an unfounded misplaced fear, inflaming a non-insightful self-centered protective instinct. What’s even sicker is when the mother evidently assumes I am there to get at her some kind of way… You know how they say it on Facebook, “It’s complicated.” Anyway, let me say that I am most pleased that my son is finally feeling free to ask me for things because his mother is quite financially resourceful (compared to me)—and it can be a bizarre matter of shame for some upper-class Negroes to allow a common field nigger to purchase things for their children. I have not been able to afford to send my son to $20,000/year private school but at least let a nigga buy the boy a little car. Thanks.
I tell my son that his father “thinks he so smart” not because of what he knows but because of his skill with asking the right questions. I was never afraid of asking a “stupid” question—my mother and father made me that way (especially my mother)! My son took the wheel of his car and turned the wheel one way and the other wheel on the same axle turned in the opposite direction. I can’t tell you how happy and proud I was when he asked, “Why does that wheel turn the other way?” When my son asked that question, I pulled up the Wikipedia article on differential. We also went to one of the last hobby shops in post-crack-cocaine Los Angeles (actually Lawndale) and my son saw me put the same question—his question to the one of clerks. I am pretty sure that was the first time in his life he actually saw me asking a question—most of the time he sees me walking around “looking like I know everything” (which, by the way, is very unattractive to sistahs who have known loser guys all of their lives). Children tend to copy their parents whether they like it or not so I was glad for him to see me deliberately elect to be in the so-called “inferior” position of the inquisitor.
So here are some parting points that may be useful to the general public:
- I do not like little model cars. I would prefer to play with GPS-controlled quad-copter drones. Actually, it is my son’s mother that is the better driver; remember: she was the one that broke my son’s car for the first time actually taking time to play with it—so clearly my son inherits from her as well.
- Because my son’s car is repairable, it requires tools. This prompted me to buy my son his first set of tools—this made me remember that a father getting his son a first set of tools is rite-of-passage tradition in the Wilhite family. A wonderful remembrance quite by “chance.”
- There are “hidden” messages I am sending to my son with this car. For example, I would never buy my son at any age a gas powered car. I’m for sustainable fuels.
- My son could lose interest in this whole car shit tomorrow and move on… As a parent, I am psychologically prepared for that… It’s not my life… it’s his…
- My father, by way, built model train tracks HO-scale (I think) for me and my brother. So the world ideas of doing this kind of stuff comes to my son from my father.
- I don’t think I would I be able to respond so constructively—and with such detail—to my children while self-medicating at the same time. I take the pain of sobriety and preach these Blues for the children!