One of my favorite albums is Lou Reed’s “New York.” On one track, “Beginning of a Great Adventure,” Reed sings, “It might be nice to have a kid that I could kick around; a little me to fill up with my thoughts.” He sings about teaching his potential kids to be uber progressive and creating his “own little liberal army in the woods.”
This song pops into my head from time to time when I think about who my son might turn out to be.
I’m a firm believer that a kid is going to be who they are, no matter what you want or don’t want. If you were hoping for a body-building Navy Seal, but your child has emo club kidDNA, you’re kind of out of luck.
But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t tried to influence my four- and a half-year-old kid a bit, even if I haven’t always been consciously aware of trying. We all do it to some extent, right?
Take music. It’s not by accident that the only “kids’ music” I play for him is They Might Be Giants. Yes, I think “Here Come the ABC’s” is a great album, but the bigger reason is that I’ve been a TMBG fan for twenty-five years and I want my kid to like them, too. (When he looked at me a few weeks ago and said, sincerely, “I like They Might Be Giants, Daddy,” I teared up.)
And I will admit that I have done my best to fan the flame of his fondness for superheroes. I’m not forcing them on him, right—just, if there’s an appropriate toy-giving occasion, I’ll make sure he gets a new action figure or two. I think someday he’ll be proud that he was the only kid in class that had Adam Strange and the Red Tornado. (Look ‘em up.)
The kid isn’t allowed to watch TV or movies yet. But once he turns five and the ban is lifted, I intend to sit down with him and enjoy the kinds of things that blew my mind when I was a boy. I want to revisit “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Godfather” through his eyes. (Obviously we won’t watch all of those as soon as he turns five. I think you need to be at least seven to really appreciate Coppola.)
I’m not insisting that my boy grow into the same kind of nerd that I am. I’m just providing him with the compass to head in that direction himself. And if that means that I occasionally ignore his plea for a Berenstain Bears book or brush off his request to play his SpongeBob album, I can live with that.
Look, I know that he’ll probably come home at age twelve and proclaim his love of the 2021 equivalent of Justin Bieber (*shudder*). When the day comes that he rejects my tastes and declares me unfit company for reasoned, thinking individuals, I’ll do my best to take it in stride and see it as part of the circle of life, or the game of life, or what-have-you. I’ll be weeping, internally, but I’ll try to put on a brave face.
Of course, there’s also the scary possibility that this geekification will go TOO well. I’m a nerd, but I’m still a functional adult, capable of having conversations about politics and literature and such. What if he takes it to the next level and becomes one of those guys in their 30s, living in our basement and getting into heated debates at the comic book shop over whether or not Superman could beat the Hulk in a fair fight? (He could. But that’s not the sort of thing you want to be seen debating in public.)
I don’t see that happening. We don’t have a basement. Also, he’s already much cooler than that. I guess what I’m hoping for is that he’ll always have an appreciation for these things I love, even as he seeks out new things on his own, the way I sought out Lou Reed and They Might Be Giants. And I pray to God that the whole One Direction thing will have run its course by the time he’s buying downloading albums.
Joe Wack currently teaches science to elementary school children in the Bronx. He lives in Harlem with his wife and son.
