My two-year-old son ate his crib. That is not a set-up for some Zen joke. He literally ate his crib. While my boy was still in the womb, and after a great amount of research, I purchased a very highly recommended and expensive crib. I took great pride in putting it together correctly. That moment, finishing the building process is the one that really drove home that I was about to have my first child at 42 years of age.
Much to my dismay, when he came home from the hospital, he went straight into some sort of strange smaller crib on wheels that stayed close to his mother’s watchful eyes. The crib lay barren and empty.
He promptly ate it
I waited patiently for my son to be placed into the crib I had put so much effort into. Eventually, when he turned two years old, it was deemed time to place him in the crib. He promptly ate it.
It started harmlessly enough, with gentle chewing. I started buying products to cover the parts he was chewing. Then, like a diapered shark, he feasted fast and furiously on the soft wood. As a last-ditch effort, I tied thick socks and clothing to all areas of the bed. It was a wasted effort. He finally chewed through the top railing and escaped. He never left a speck of wood.
Changing his diaper was like emptying a woodchipper. His doctor was visited several times. My boy was deemed healthy as a horse. Perhaps, healthy as a termite would be a better description. She stated that she had seen similar things before and sometimes kids just chew their beds.
While I was sitting on the floor building an emergency metal crib, I looked at my kid. He was standing, with duct tape holding his diaper in place, as he enjoyed removing dirty diapers and using them as a medium through which to express himself on my walls. His face was heavily red in spots where he enjoyed rubbing it on the carpet/flooring at various intervals, for reasons that pass understanding.
He had woken up at four in the morning, refused to nap and refused to eat anything other than BBQ pork rinds that day. He removed every stitch of clothing, no matter the tricks learned on Google to prevent him from doing so. He was covered with a large purple bruise from jumping off the couch. We had just returned from the speech therapist who had informed me that he has every faculty needed for talking, he just seems to not wish to.
As I was holding the metal bars together and trying to fasten them with a drill, he smiled a big grin, said “DA-DAHH” at the top of his lungs, threw a toy at me and vanished like a bolt of lightning down the hallway. I dropped the pieces of the new crib and just sat against the wall. My head in my hands, defeated. I had failed as a parent. I sucked at this Dad thing. I reckoned that I was too old. I just couldn’t do it.
That got me thinking about my father. I had lost him not too long before his grandson was born. I loved and worshipped that man. He was my best friend. He had been a great father to me. I was wondering what it would take to be a great Dad like him when I started accessing memories of him.
I realized that I had always viewed my life events from a son’s perspective. Never from my father’s. I drifted back to one occasion specifically. I must have been about eight years old. I am positive things just as moronic happened before I turned eight, but that is about as good a cut-off line as any.
I was very fortunate as a kid to not be deprived. I was not spoiled by any means, but we had things similar to the neighbours around us. Above-ground pool, bicycles, so on and so forth. My best friend in the whole world was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed neighbour girl about a year and a half older than me. We were joined at the hip. The summer of my eighth year, her father got her a go-cart. It was bright orange and as fine a racing machine as I had ever seen.
Luckily, it was a two-seater. I never drove it, but I spent many hours the first day on the side seat, with my tongue hanging out like a puppy in a convertible.
My own go-cart
Eventually, my father noticed me riding with her, flagged me down and made me come home. He seemed angry. I was confused as to why. Looking back, I think it was because I was letting a girl drive me around. Either way, the next afternoon, when he arrived home from work, in the back of the truck was my own fresh, new go-cart. I say ‘fresh and new,’ but by that I mean it was new to me. In fact, I am pretty sure he found it at the local dump, the scrapyard or perhaps parted with a five-dollar bill for it.
There was no determinable colour. If pressed for the information, I would say the best description would be baby poo green/rust-coloured. I am pretty sure the wheels had been harvested from hand trucks. It was outfitted, not with leather as the finer automobiles of the day were, nor with the faux leather that was standard on other go-carts. It simply had crooked pieces of plywood bolted/duct-taped down in place of the bottom seat. The back was purely the steel rail where the back of the seat had once been. I think I got an infection just from helping him back it off the truck.
He was beaming. “Looky there boy, that steering wheel is off a VW Beetle,” he exclaimed with pride, the source of which I still don’t comprehend. I pointed out the fact, which I thought was important, that this contraption didn’t have an engine, before asking if I could go play with my neighbour. He growled a “no” at me and went to the front seat of his truck where, lo and behold, an engine sat.
There were no identifiable markings on the engine. I couldn’t determine where it came from or what it went to or through. What I did grasp was that there was going to be some quality time with Dad, learning some new curse words while he attempted to attach the thing to my “new” go-cart. He explained in detail what he was doing while I handed him tools, all the while keeping a free eye out to watch my buddy zip by now and again on her speedster.
After what seemed to me to be a scarily brief amount of time, he announced it was done. He put a milk crate under the drive wheel and yanked on the starter cord until beads of sweat popped up around his brow. The motor sputtered to life, spewing bluish smoke through the small barn.
While it was warming up, I asked him two questions: Firstly, where were the brakes? Secondly, how does one cut the engine off? He looked at the contraption with a shrug. This is when I knew, at eight years old, that this wasn’t going to go well for me. I, a mere child, was thinking this project out further than my father.
Even though my concern was growing, I had ultimate faith in my father. He had rigged up (you couldn’t make this stuff up) a house light switch with a full faceplate as the kill switch, and then welded a piece of steel connected to a wire. When the brake pedal was pressed, this piece would wedge itself in the inside “spoke” area of the back drive wheel. It was the polar opposite of an anti-lock braking system. It was, in fact, a lock braking system.
Death Trap 2000
Before I could question him further, he had dragged the thing into the field beside our house and had fetched an old baseball helmet for me to wear. You know, for protection. I refused to get on. He asked what the problem was. I expressed concern over a feature that is not on most new go-carts.
There was a bar that held the steering wheel up and a support bar for that bar coming straight down. This bar had to be straddled during the operation of the aforementioned contraption. I was a large child, so when I got on this damn thing, precious areas of my body were already touching the said bar, albeit just a little, when the machine was in the off position.
He convinced me it would be all right and my dumb ass climbed aboard for the maiden voyage on what I had aptly named “Death Trap 2000.”
I was more than a little concerned about it moving with my ever-so-gentle parts, which I adored already by that age, so close to steel. In what I am sure was one of his prouder moments of being a parent, he convinced me it would be all right and my dumb ass climbed aboard for the maiden voyage on what I had aptly named “Death Trap 2000.”
He yanked the starter cord and I pressed the gas pedal, and to our surprise, I motored around the pasture. I made a few laps. Tested the brakes a few times, found that if I used all my strength to hold my body in place at just the perfect weird and rigid angle, my bits would only be vibrated against the steel. I found that to be more than OK.
I then eased it into the pit area. I was more comfortable and a bit proud of my father. I thanked him and asked if I could go drive beside the neighbour girl. He nodded proudly. It was a great moment for us both. He cranked me, I took off and joined her, and he walked over and leaned against the fence to watch us. She pulled alongside me, gave me a thumbs-up and sped off. I puttered right along, happy as a clam, making one lap for every one of her seven or so.
After half an hour or so, my father got frustrated with me for losing a race I wasn’t even aware I was in, to a girl. He screamed to me to “open it up,” to which I replied, “I got it floored.” Which I did, and I wasn’t even aware of the theory behind throttle operation. Pressing it as far as it went was all I knew.
He hopped over the fence, jogged up beside me (which should indicate the warp speed at which I was travelling), and looked at the throttle cable. Sure enough, I was going as fast as possible. She whizzed by three times during the engineering discussion we were having.
He ordered me home to the garage, so I waved a reluctant goodbye to her and headed for the pits. I eased into the barn, hit the brakes in a most careful manner while avoiding injury to my boy parts, flipped the kill switch and hopped off. I took my cracked blue baseball helmet off and shook my head like a race-car driver.
He was red with anger, a calm man to a fault, nothing ever got to my Dad. He could handle most anything with humour. I can only remember about 10 times he ever got “mad” and turned red. This was one of these times. I was, once again, confused. The Death Trap 2000(™) had operated. I had a good time, didn’t get injured or maimed. This was a victory. He felt differently. No son of his was going to be “outran” by a little girl.
I shrugged and leaned against the workbench, handing him tools again while he took everything apart. Everything was in pieces when he finally realized the two problems that were preventing this machine from being a hot rod. The fact that I was a giant was a hindrance. My weight slowed me down. We would have to work around that. The fact that the motor was one off a ground tiller was the bigger problem.
Done for the night, we headed in to clean up and cook dinner for my mother. The entire time, Dad was muttering to himself.
The motor and engine shop
On the weekend, he and I hopped in Blackie, which I had named our truck because it was black and I was such a clever child, and headed into town. We did our normal chores, got root beers in glass bottles, all the fun things. The last stop was at an engine and motor shop I had never noticed before.
Inside, my father began discussing my Death Trap 2000 (™) with a man whose hands looked like they had never seen soap. I was fascinated. I ventured around the shop, looking at various things at different degrees of being operated on, when I spun suddenly to face the noise of a violent-sounding engine starting behind me. The shop owner gunned it a few times, which sent shivers of fear down my spine.
I turned to look at my father, and the glee in his eyes was only matched by the dread in mine. Turns out, this was some sort of high-RPM, massive chainsaw motor. I watched as my father blurted out “I will take it.” and walked to the front with the man to make the purchase.
“Wait, what? Why do we need this motor that sounds like a million angry bees? What are we going to do with it?” After nine ignored questions, I realized in horror what that vicious thing’s intention was. More horror came when I realized I would be strapped to it.
I want to state, right off the bat here, it was fast. I could have qualified for the Indy 500 on a go-cart. So technically, this wasn’t a failure for the old man. That being said, let’s resume our normally scheduled program: I was hoping for chores when we got home. I offered to cut grass, clean out the cubbyhole, pick okra, everything I could think of to no avail. He wanted the go-cart done. My father was a slow-moving, easygoing man. When someone rushed him, he loved to say, “If you don’t like this speed, you will surely hate the next one.”
On this afternoon, however, he flew around like a man possessed. Bolts and the smell of degreaser filled the barn as he cranked wrenches, tightened a chain. In record time, he declared it done and dragged it out to the field with the lawnmower. Like a good little trooper, I followed, with my cracked blue baseball helmet in tow.
My mistake here was not to give my racing machine a good “once-over.” I just accepted my crew chief’s assurance that this ride was ready to go. I knew there was no point in arguing the matter, so I just straddled the bar, nestled in the pinewood seat and tapped my helmet, indicating that I was ready to go. He yanked the pull cord. I sat and let it idle for a moment, adjusting to how loud it was directly against my lower back. I looked up at him, then at the field and did the only thing I knew to do. I stomped the gas wide open.
Let me retract a bit, The layout of the house and yard is critical here. There was a large field, which I was in with the DT2000 (shortened version of Death Trap 2000(™)). On the edges, it was heavily wooded by large pine and oak trees that were so close together, it was hard for a human to go through. At the end of that field was the main road, with cars cruising along at 50 to 55 miles (or between 80 and 89 kilometres) per hour.
At the other end of the field, where I was idling the go-cart, there was a small entrance leading into our backyard, which at the time contained a large above-ground pool, a barn and the brick home I grew up in. The end of the barn, facing this opening, had a garage door-sized entryway that was open. The rest of the barn and the interior walls had a cinder-block base that was three feet tall. Half of that door opening included an open area full of various steel-working tools and metal workbenches, and the other half consisted of an old lawnmower with its front end pushed against the cinder-block wall.
The good lawnmower usually sat behind the old one; it was now in the field, as it had provided a place for my father to observe the DT2000. The rest of the backyard was quite small, with heavy metal fencing all around, concreted into the ground. The only other feature was the house, which was large and brick, but nearly all of the back had what we called the “cubbyhole,” a large walkway that was fairly deep and gave us access to the basement of the house. Now, where were we? Aah…. yes…
I stomped the gas wide open, and felt the wild sensation of my neck snapping back and the rush of air into my face. I was MOVING. In all seriousness, I went from 0 to about 50 or so, in the blink of an eye—50 miles per hour may not sound fast, but you should try it while three inches from the ground, in an open machine at eight years old. It is damn fast. I drifted along the edges of the field and made a lap in mere seconds.
Something was wrong
I was thrilled, right up to the point when I passed my father and saw the terror in his eyes. Later, he would say that all he could see of me was the blur of my helmet whipping by. His terror sent a message to me that something was wrong. Little did either of us know how wrong it was. I was making laps like an Air Force pilot. G-force was a factor and my lips and ears were flapping in the wind.
As I would zing past my father, time after time, we would scream things at each other. He would be screaming at me to “Hit the kill switch,” which took four passes to comprehend; my screaming, which was either in a different language or I was speaking in tongues, wasn’t critical. When his instructions finally took hold in my mind, I remembered the kill switch, whew, death averted. I flipped the switch, hmmm, odd, I flipped it multiple times. No change in speed or motor sound.
As I streaked past, I yelled this out, to which he offered another puzzled look. I’d had enough. I slammed the brakes, several times, actually. I stood on them. Nothing. It was about this time he and I both realized, in his haste to get this show on the road, he had forgotten to rewire the kill switch and reattach the brakes. This seemed like important stuff. Stuff that should be done properly. Safety stuff.
This was the first of many times in my life that I just accepted that I was probably going to die. For every lap I made at the speed of sound, I could see my father working on a plan. I started noticing that the edges of the field where I had to make turns were now basically turning into dirt pits. With each drifting turn on all four corners, I was getting closer and closer to the point of no return. It now was just a matter of choosing whether to have a fiery crash in the trees or into a moving car along the road.
My father’s “rescue plan” was becoming apparent. He was reaching out to me every time I went by, grabbing at me, trying to snatch me off the DT2000. In hindsight, once again, I guess I should be thankful he never resorted to trying to lasso me or using a hook. On about the eighth time by, he finally got a paw on my shoulder, I felt a tug, and with that he was down and out.
I found out later that he had torn two of his fingernails off, and that I had dragged him a bit. He had decided to just let it go, and let me make laps until I ran out of fuel. At that moment, though, all I knew was that he was jogging off. He didn’t inform me of the whole fuel plan, nor did I consider it. In my mind, I was abandoned to figure out this problem on my own.
So, I started to work out scenarios. The trees were a no, that would be a brutal way to go. The highway was a no, for even if I missed the cars I would still be in the same predicament. My only choice was to enter the backyard, which turned my options into either the barn, the brick cubbyhole, the swimming pool or the metal fence.
The brick cubbyhole meant death at that speed. I honestly thought running into the side of the swimming pool would drown me. The metal fence would probably shred me. So I settled on a plan. On one of the next passes, I would just fly into the barn and hit the back of the old lawnmower, figuring its tires were nearly the same width as the width between the front tires on the DT 2000 (™), and hopefully the rubber-to-rubber contact would result in the least painful death.
You have to be impressed that an eight-year-old thought all this out so well. I remember the process as clear as if it was this morning. It took a few passes to get my nerve up. My Dad, who sat down comfortably on the steps to watch me, assured in his knowledge about the fuel, was relaxing. No clue what I had schemed. I pulled my little cracked baseball helmet tight, white-knuckled the steering wheel and decided it was go-time.
Like a Space Shuttle leaving the launch pad
I entered the backyard fence at roughly the same speed at which the Space Shuttle leaves the launch pad. I noticed nothing else, as my focus was on centring the tires of the DT2000 on the tires of the old broken lawnmower.
Steady as a rock, I closed my eyes on impact. It was over that fast. I felt nothing as the DT2000 hit solid wheel to wheel. The back end rose and twisted so hard that when it fell back to the barn floor, the frame was bent to the point that the drive wheel couldn’t even touch the ground.
I was unconscious when my Dad got there and he thought I was dead.
I was unconscious when my Dad got there and he thought I was dead. Engine still running, wheel violently spinning in the air, unable to find grip. He shut the DT2000 off for the last time. He checked me over and couldn’t find any blood. I was making noises at this point. I came to as he was gently taking my helmet off and feeling around my head.
I slurred to him that my head was fine. The baseball helmet had worked, no head injury. My hands were bleeding a little bit and were sore from breaking the “VW. Beetle” steering wheel. What had caused me to pass out was the fact that my poor, developing “man-pebbles” caught the entire force of the wreck.
I am struggling with descriptive words to use here. Usually when a pipe or some similarly shaped object “racks” a male, it tends to split the berries and cause extreme pain. I was not so fortunate. “Lefty” had safely been nudged out of the way; ole “Righty” wasn’t as lucky. He took the full brunt head-on between the bones of my crotch and the steel bar.
The steel bar was now bent into a sideways “V.” I didn’t know where “Righty” was. I also couldn’t feel around to check, as the region was sending pain waves to my brain that make it possible for me to laugh at women in labour and call them pansies. Every few pulses of pain were making me vomit at this point.
Dad roughly dragged me out of the now-retired DT2000 to give me a good going-over. He was a volunteer fireman and paramedic in his spare time. He couldn’t find anything wrong with me, other than my quickly swelling nether regions. He just held my hand and talked to me, mostly telling me there was no way we were going to tell my mother about this. I lay there for over an hour; I know because I watched the clock in the barn. I couldn’t stand up, I was in immense pain, my stomach was a knot and the swelling was a sight to behold through my gray shorts with the ironic neon green racing stripes.
He finally helped me into the house and a shower, after which he brought several things up from the freezer for me to place on my poor scrotum. He told me to lie in my room, gave me a handful of aspirin and informed me that he would handle my Mom. It was peaceful lying there. The pain was immense, but I had lived. I was left alone.
At suppertime, while my Mom was in their bedroom, he came and half-scooped me up, and helped me into my dinner chair. I whined, he told me to suck it up. Sitting there was the equivalent of being tortured. I managed through dinner. When Mom got up and told me to do the dishes and went back to her bedroom, he escorted me back to bed and washed the dishes for me.
I fell asleep and then it was Sunday. He somehow kept Mom off my tail that morning and afternoon. I could barely walk. The insides of both my thighs were turning a pretty dark blue. I watched TV and sipped drinks and all was fine. I had lived, we had kept it from Mom. This was going to be OK.
Unfortunately for us, my mother got a wild hair and decided that since we hadn’t done anything as a family in a while, it was time for the family to play some cards. She called for me from the kitchen table. I couldn’t move. By the third scream, I knew I had no choice. I hobbled in, and at this point, the bruises came well down to my knees. The balloon had burst. Our crime was discovered.
They had a pretty good fight, and I got yelled at pretty handily as well. The next day, I was taken to the family doctor. Who, thankfully, located “Righty.” He told me I was going to be just fine, sore for a couple of days but with no lasting effects. To this day, I am not sure how he came to that diagnosis.
He elbowed me in the ribs as I was leaving, and said: “Hey, pray to God that the pain goes away and the swelling stays.” It was as good an idea as I had heard, and being a devout Christian at eight years old, I did as I was told. The pain did leave eventually. Unfortunately, so did the swelling. So much for prayer.
Just being there and trying is enough
All I was left with was a mangled piece of metal and this memory that came flooding back to me as I thought of my own child and our “adventures.” I came to understand, as I hope any parent reading this does, that just being there and trying is enough. I am enough. I am trying. The only words my son 做 use are variations of the term “Dad.”
My Dad screwed up constantly. I still adored him because he was always there. Always trying. He did his best to keep me alive through his inevitable screw-ups, as well as mine. It was no easier for him than it is for me. I, and you, are doing just fine. If you tear aside all the invented reality about what being a parent is “supposed” to be or what “needs” to happen on your timeline, you come to an awareness that just loving your kid and having them love you back is all that truly matters. That, along with good insurance and really, really strong duct tape.
In the end, as I watch my son try to figure out how to destroy his new metal bed, I know I am failing this Dad task, successfully. I bet you are as well.
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