Week 58: Infinity G37 Coupe

My four year old son, affectionately known on this blog as Racer A, recently started with the county's Head Start pre-school program, but classes are a few towns over so it means driving 20 minutes to get him to the bus. 

That short ride gives us time to talk about important things, like today:

ME: You know what? I'm glad deer don't drive cars. I don't think they would be good drivers.

RACER A: (Unphased by comment) Uh-huh, I don't think so either. I'm glad deer don't drive too.


(We drive a minute or two in silence.)

ME: You know what else? I'm glad squirrels don't drive. I would have a difficult time seeing their tiny cars.

RACER A: I'm glad squirrels don't drive, too, but they could drive big cars, you know.

ME: True, but they would probably need tiny seats in their big cars.

RACER A:  Yes. Hey, you know what I'm glad of? I'm glad cats don't drive cars.

ME: Me too. I would never know what the cars would do next if cats were driving. They might suddenly turn left, and then spin around or something.

RACER A:  How do you think dogs would drive?

ME: I'm not certain. They might goof around a lot, go slow, then fast, and they might play chase in cars.

RACER A: That would not be good.

ME: No, definitely not.

(We ride again in silence.)

ME: You know what I'm really glad about?

RACER A:  What?

ME: That fish don't drive cars.

RACER A:  Me too. How would they do that?

ME: They'd have to fill their cars with water.

RACER A:  Maybe they would drive in their fishbowl.

ME: You mean a fishbowl with wheels?

RACER A:  No, I mean their fishbowl would sit on the seat, with a seatbelt around it.

ME: But how would they reach the steering wheel? They'd need to hang out of the top.

RACER A:  Yup. But wait!! How would they reach those...um, those things you push down on the bottom?

ME: The gas and break petals?

RACER A:  Yes.

ME: I don't know. They would need someone to help. Maybe a lizard.

RACER A:  Yes, or maybe a sheep, but the sheep would hop over the fish, but only once, and then settle down. No, wait, maybe a frog can help.

ME: A frog would be a good helper.

RACER A:  Or a cat.

ME: No, the cat would eat the fish. Or at least tease it.

(We pass a transport truck hauling new cars.)

ME: Look at that that!

RACER A:  COOL!

What kind of animal would drive that?

RACER A:  Maybe a cow?

ME: Maybe, or maybe a horse. Horses are used to hauling things.

RACER A:  Yes, that's it. A horse would be perfect. (He adds a slight pause between "per" and "fect.")

ME: I think a horse might be a good driver.

RACER A:  Oh yes. A horse would definitely be a good driver.

(We approach the drop off spot).

ME: What if we get there and your bus is being driven by an animal, like a moose or something, although I guess a moose would have a hard time fitting its antlers through the bus door.

RACER A:  The bus driver would probably be a goat.

ME: Yes, a goat would fit better.

RACER A:  Wait a second. Animals don't drive cars. Only grownups. And teenagers. How do teenagers drive cars?

ME: Kind of like cats.






Photo of Matchbox Infinity G37 and red sky of impending doom courtesy of Phil Pekarcik, perhaps inspired by Week 57's dark tone.

Speaking of which, I considered whether or not to publish Week 57 as I try to keep this blog light, but Daddy's Tiny Cars is after all a time capsule diary that would be incomplete if I didn't express elements from my real life, including the downs. I don't mean giving every rough detail, but rather capturing essences of the week. I hope you all understand

Now I must go. There appears to be a fruit fly swimming in my wine.

Week 57: 1954 Jaguar XK120 SE

Today's Daddy's Tiny Car is a return to the initial concept of the blog -- an affordable fantasy removed from concerns of reality and practicality, because, while a lot can happen in the blink of an eye, I'm thinking a real '54 Jaguar probably isn't likely to show up in the near future no matter how many times I work those eyelids.

Not that other things haven't occurred between blinks this week -- I blink, ill placed words split my foundation sending emotional tsunamis roaring over my shores, blink again, my middle son is running a fever of 103 (he is fine now), and blink yet again and I'm on the phone listening to the tinkling sound of stress fractures  spiderwebbing cracks throughout the emotional wellbeing of a friend and hoping he's equipped with safety glass, because that window glass of the soul is shattering.

This week was enough to make me want to keep my eyes shut and let the world blink without me for awhile.

But the challenge and beauty of having children is of course you need to keep your eyes open, because if you don't, you'll open them to find the kids standing on the kitchen table flinging oatmeal at the ceiling fan.

So I've kept my eyes open, taken care of business (even if I did skimp on yard work), read stories to the kids, cooked dinners, and overall bucked up.

Nonetheless, in the deep dark when I can't tell if my eyes are open or not, I'm taking a few moments to visualize  this wonderful Jaguar (said to have been the world's fastest standard production car at the time it was launched) while listening to ELO and smelling the comforting odor of a strange-scented candle in the other room (is it Fresh Bamboo?) -- a sensory concoction that might not do much for anyone else, but is custom built by me to recharge my battery and prepare me for a new day of blinking.

Come morning, my eyes and I will be ready.

Photo courtesy of Phil Pekarcik.

Week 56: Mystery Car: Hemi Cuda

My eyes have become fussy four year olds at dinnertime.

TOO CLOSE, I can't See! That's TOO FAR, it's Blurry!! I kinda see that, but my right eye doesn't like it, only my left eye! I can't read that!! I want something larger!!

The Kraft macaroni and cheese to my fussy eyes is my progressive lens eyeglasses,  trifocal lens meant to keep all my failing ranges of vision happy, even if it means flipping my eyes around like a kid's fingers on an X-Box controller in order to see, or, as is more often the case, tilting my head like a curious dog in order to read the sign to the men's room.

Trifocals are an amazing gift to diminishing vision, when they can be found.

Even with how great they are, I still take them off to read, as I did yesterday to read Racer A and Baby G a picture book about Jamaica.

The problem was, I neglected to put them back on.

And Baby G found them. And toddled off with them.

Losing your eyeglasses is a singular aggravation unlike other irritating circumstances. You can't see well enough to see them again, some type of anti-zen koan, and even though you take those glasses for granted every second of the day, once they are gone, you feel like some rogue suddenly sneaked in and stole your teeth, they are that much a part of you.

My glasses were gone. I looked and looked and looked. Gone.

Finally, there was no other choice.

I had to look under the couch.

Today's Daddy's Tiny Cars is a 2011 Mystery Car, one of the cars you pick that is encased in a black blisterpack that hides the vehicle. The car turned out to be a most awesome Hemi Cuda. Mystery Car is significant, because with three kids in the house, looking under the couch is a mystery, and not something anyone takes lightly. There be monsters.

The first thing I encountered under the couch was some type of raisin. Without the benefit of trifocal technology I wasn't sure what was going on, but this raisin seemed wrong, a distorted dried fruit dweller of the underworld.

That raisin was a warning.

I kept going, looking for a familiar outline of eyeglasses, but the more I looked, the more I found the forgotten oddities of the toddler world -- Cheerios, fruit rinds, Lego people assembled with arms for heads, sparkly stickers on anything and everything, a surreal landscape of crunchy, textural filth art.

How does this stuff get under there? Why? How? My god, how afraid my eyeglasses must be.

But they were never found.

I went a whole day using a spare pair of glasses, ones with a single focus. I felt seasick most of the day, but at least there was at least one distance when everything was crystal clear, regardless of how I moved my head or eyes. Now if I could just get everything to stand there, I would be fine.

My trifocals did show up today, sitting peacefully on a toybox. At the time of this writing I have yet to put them on as it has taken a day to adjust to the single focus lens, but the relief of finding them is immense.

I may have my glasses, but I won't use them to look under the couch.

There are some things that are best left to the shadows and blurriness.

Photo of awesome Cuda by Phil Pekarcik.

Week 55: Ferrari 612 Scagletti

This amazing, and detailed, Hot Wheels road machine has the unfortunate name of Scaglietti, which just doesn't sound as nice in American as it would in Italian.

Scaglietti sounds like a made up put down from a middle schooler. Names just need to sound bad to have affect.


Racer A: Dad, Dre's calling me a booby butt.


Me: That doesn't even mean anything, so why does it bother you?


Racer A (going on five in Nov.): Because I don't like it. Tell him to stop calling me a booby butt.


Me: Okay, Dre, stop calling your brother a booby butt.


Baby G (age 2): (snorts) You bobby butt, dada.


Me: Yes I am. Dre, see what's happened? Baby G is calling me a booby butt now.


Racer Z: Sorry.




And so on.

In thinking about it, however, I sit corrected. A name doesn't even need to sound bad. I can remember an argument erupting at home once because one brother called the other a blinkyblonk, which ended up  in a shouting match and a loud proclamation of "I'M NOT A BLINKYBLONK! YOU'RE A BLINKYBLONK!"

He told him.

At least it ended before someone got called a peeshyposh.

I just can't tolerate that kind of language in my house.


Photo courtesy of Phil Pekarcik, who, like you, is seeing this new magazine format for the first time. I haven't decided if I will keep this new layout, but so far I like it because it highlights the great Tiny Cars photos from Phil and others. Write me and let me know what you think.

Week 54: Karmen Ghia

Convertible weather may soon be coming to a close here in Ohio, friends, but there is still plenty of time for a top-down, fall drive in the crisp autumn air to look at the leaves, just now beginning to forget their green.

This week's tiny car, a Matchbox diecast of an older model Karmen Ghia convertible (even if you are not a 'car person' tell me this isn't cool and exotic?), represents a car that is fast, difficult to spell, exciting, and full of exotic mystery, so of course it reminds me of...

                                                                    ... libraries.

One of my earliest memories is getting Leo Leoni's picture book Frederick (I had the heart of an English major even at age five) from our tiny library in the Kinderhouse, the brick kindergarten building in the small town where I grew up. I remember how amazed I was to find a place hidden away where you could pick out books to enjoy -- to me it was the equivalent of some sort of hidden garden with Creamsicles and colored lights. Ah, how I loved libraries.

Now, I take my own kids to our local library, and while some say libraries may be singing their swan song against the rush of digital books and online media, they are still places of magic for my kids, even if part of the draw is to play on the computers. No matter, it is still that mystery, that sense of being surrounded by words and meaning just outside of their grasp, that fuels the excitement, and the thrill of the hunt of finding that ultimate cool book.

You may be saying, "Well, that covers exotic, and mysterious, and difficult to spell, but I'm not getting fast."

Take a two year old to a library. You'll understand the connection to fast.

Rows of organized shelves with big open race tracks of carpet.  How can you not run? The act almost seems obligatory if you are two.

I love libraries, but if I could build my own fantasy library, the one thing I would change would be those ordered rows, not to stop Baby G from tearing down their book-lined tunnels, but to turbocharge the mystery. I would offer order, but I would also offer nooks and crannies and unexpected finds, twists and turns, unexpected rooms of literary finds, varying heights of ceiling, shelves hidden behind curtains, basements,  and winding, unexpected turns. Libraries are about mystery, and my library would emphasize this through its physical construction.

Baby G would still run, but it would be a circuit race, not a quarter mile.

I embrace e-books and all they hold, but I simultaneously embrace the gift of paper and binding. If as a society we primarily move to digital, I hope we will always have libraries as a physical place of intellectual mystery for our kids to explore. And for me.

Libraries are the Karmen Ghias of words.

The photo of the Karmen Ghia on the road to learning courtesy of Photographer Phil Pekarcik.

Week 53: 1974 AMC Hornet

Here we are 53 weeks later, the official beginning of the second year of Daddy's Tiny Cars. To celebrate, I tracked down a special tiny car, a 1974 AMC Hornet made by Johnny Lightning.

While many might not see a '74 Hornet as a special car, it was a Hornet, I don't remember the year, belonging to my friend Mike that drove us to many adventures while we were learning to drive in 1979.

I didn't look to see if my Johnny Lightning had a tiny eight-track player in the dash. If it doesn't, it should.

                                                           *      *        *

As previously mentioned, the first annual Daddy's Tiny Cars Race was held September 12, 2011.

The rules were made up as we went along, and, in retrospect, didn't actually make any sense. Each racer, this year Racer Z (11 years old), Racer A (4 years old), Baby G (2 years), and me (years enough to remember the Hornet), could pick three cars each, except for me, who only selected a single car. Each son would race a best-of-three match against my single selection, Week 51's bright yellow 1966 custom GTO station wagon.

How could I lose? I hoped they would take it in stride.

 Since I was racing more than anyone else, I decided that to move on to the finals, the kids would need to qualify by beating me. Winners would square up against each other. For me to win, I would need to beat all racers. I don't exactly get how that works, but I wanted to make sure I got to individually race all the kids and hadn't really worked out the details.

Baby G kicked off the trial run of the modified track by running a plastic Peter Pan figurine. No amount of coaxing to use something with wheels seemed to work. According to Peter Pan, the track was ready.

Racer Z kicked off the official races with his red Hotwheels Pro Stock Firebird.

Results: Racer Z dominated the first two races, negating a need for a third.

A minor setback. I was setback by a minor.

Strangely, since Racer A was manning
(kidding?) the camera, this was
the only shot of Racer Z.
See? His hand is in the grey
shirt.

Next was Racer A with his blue Hot Wheels Camaro Pro Stock.
I won the first race, he won the second, but I won the third. The focus, however, was on the wonderful win during the second race.

Baby G was a no show. He must be at the concession stand.

Racer A then raced his green Hot Wheels Spectyte, successfully beating my yellow wagon twice, meaning our next race would determine who would win the series. It would need to wait, however, for Racer Z was back, this time racing the legendary Hot Wheels Yur So Fast, fresh out of the package.

My wagon was not So Fast. Racer A won the first two. He had won the series.

Daddy and Racer A, with  glowing red eyes.
When the eyes glow green, GO!

Racer A returned, bucking the system by insisting he reuse his Pro Stock, which seemed to break the rules, but, since there weren't actually any rules, did not. A won the first race, but next I beat him by a hair. The third race, however, he won, winning the best of three series. Tears were averted.

Baby G, who had been doing an amazing job of hiding his excitement, finally arrived with an unnamed Hot Wheels MacDonald's toy to beat me in the first race. I think he ran it down the track backwards.

In the second and third races, however, he lost, which didn't matter as he had been lured away to the siren song of Nick Junior (the cable station, not some race car driver). Note to self: television off next time during the races.

With Baby G out of the running, that left the showdown between Racers A and Z.

Even though Racer Z had cinched the series win, we nonetheless raced his Hot Wheels Double Demon anyway. He, appropriately, won double.

Out of the races, I changed position from driver to sport and life coach as I monitored the race between Racer A's Pro Stock and Racer Z's Pro Stock and defused potential arguments.  In the final count, older sibling Z won the races. Tears were shed by younger one, older one gave pep talk, younger one sniffed, and then I wandered off in a dream state, thinking about next year's race.

A good time was had by all.

Racing excitement proved just a bit too much for Baby G.

Sadly, there were not spectators in the audience due to a poor PR campaign on my part (as in I didn't mention it to anyone other than a vague reference online.) Nonetheless, a great shout out to photographer Phil Pekarcik who took the picture of the Hornet and who was there in spirit.

His spirit even beat my station wagon. 

Week 52: Ferrari 308 GTS (in red)

What the ... Week 52 already?

I have been saying from the beginning that Daddy's Tiny Cars (which actually began as Daddy's Matchbox) would become cool to me after it had run for at least a year.

I just didn't expect a year to go by so fast.

Baby G is a year older since Week One, as is Racer A and Racer Z.

As am I.

Lots has happened, lots hasn't happened, I've remembered a few birthdays, I've forgotten a few more, but through it all the tiny cars have kept rolling. I've even duplicated a car - horrors!

Yes, this beauty of a sports car, a 1976 Ferrari 308 GTS, actually showed up in Week 13 in a blue version, unremembered by me until pointed out by Phil, photographer for DTC. Such will happen in 52 weeks, and as much as I loved that blue Ferrari, I like it even better in red, so no harm.

So as we prepare for the big Daddy's Tiny Cars race and a year into the diary, (see Week 51), I want to thank some folks who have ridden along.

Thanks to James at blog Luke I am Your Father and Barbara from Notes from the Second Half for your support, as well as to the other daddy and mommy bloggers and others who have written and sent out words of well wishing.

Thanks for the great car gifts from various friends: the incredible English coach from Rajni in Seattle (I'll get a picture at a later post), the cool cars from Tim P. in Cleveland, the three tasty additions from Linda in Washington, and of course cars from my folks and my brother.

Thanks for help with my pictures along the way to SAHD Thomas, Dom, Charlie, my wife, and of course Phil P.

Thanks for the constant weirdness and content inspiration from my kids.

And thanks to Les, David M. and Patty (both of NYC), Jen E, Amore, Marty K., and so many other great folks -- in essence, thanks to each and every person who has taken time to read this oddball of a blog adventure. Guess what -- you're all older too!

And you all look great.

See you next week for the results of the race. My station wagon is so going to kick butt.

And if I didn't mention someone I should have, please do not be offended -- I picked the same Ferrari twice without even remembering -- that's what happens to the memory after repeated doses of the Backyardigans, In the Night Garden, Wonder Pets, Wow Wow Wubbsy, and others (all of which I actually enjoy.)

Photo of my second Ferrari courtesy of Phil Pekarcik -- silver silos, for those looking to tour Ohio, can actually be found in Middlefield, Ohio.