The End of the Beginning

Tomorrow is the I-mac's first day of kindergarten and as we drove through the Liberty Tubes this morning his old man got all misty-eyed cuz you see from here on out his momma gets to drive him to school but for the last five years or so give or take a few days here and there this has been my responsibility, and you see as we drove through that tunnel this morning i told him that this was it, the last time i'd be his regular driver, and his eyes, eyes that look exactly like mine, met his old man's and the look on his face broke my fucking heart or maybe more correctly mine broke his as he explained to me that it would be alright and that i'd still get to take him to school sometimes and then we both kind of stared out the window for a few seconds until Nick Disaster broke the silence by asking about wild turkeys...

You see this first born of mine and me have sorta grown up together, in all actuality he's probably ahead of me in that dept. but we used to drive through Oakland to his old daycare when he was just a wee little baby all bundled and sleeping most of the time, it was on those drives that i listened to the complete Fall BBC sessions, Joy Division, the Pavement re-issues, they were hectic and pleasant drives and in the morning i'd stop in at the local bodega where a Russian man would be smoking behind the counter and we'd bullshit and i'd get my coffee and be on my way, it was here that we met the world's greatest kid-sitter, who to this day is still the person i trust my kids with most if i'm not able to be around... after that it was the nightmare, a place that was cheap and convenient and run by a woman who the I-mac would call a witch, right to her face, a year after we left the place as we stood in line at the post office, of course his daddy just stood there and smiled and agreed and  the experience of that place would be multiple posts, which leads us to his last place, the place he and his brother have been the last 2 years roughly, the place that was once close to our little house in Little Italy but is now a good 25-30 minute drive in the morning and even worse during the evening rush hour, a place his little brother will still attend for the time being...

What i'm gonna miss most with my little dude is the conversations and the songs and the all the words his father taught him as he raced through traffic as if he was the only person on the planet who knew how to drive, see just today we talked about the difference between mountains and hills, debated the various merits and coolness of volcanoes, sang some songs, ( he asked if the Dum Dum Girls cover of There's a Light that Never Goes Out was a Morrissey song, yes i was very proud), it's just been one of the times when we kinda blocked shit out and talked, hell i remember talking to him when all he did was goo and gaa and burp and shit himself and now the kid's off to school where year by year i'll become just a little less cool than i am now in his eyes until the point where i'm the world's ranking fucking idiot, as i'm fond of telling my dad "you're alot smarter now than you were when i was 16",  but that's what i signed up for and now it's time to let loose on the reins a bit but i'd be lying if i said it didn't put a lump in my throat and make the eyes a bit wet, yeah i know, i'm a big fucking pansy, if you didn't know that by now you haven't been reading close enough...

That said, it will now be Nick Disaster's turn to get 3 years of  hanging with his dad on the way to daycare/pre-school, without having to compete with his big brother for attention, i'm sure it will be rough at first cuz though they like to beat on each other the I-mac is Nicky D's fucking hero, we'll be alright though, mainly it's just a melancholy daddy thinking about the last five years of his morning commute with his oldest son...

as for the video, well that's just something i like, seems i learned more from School House Rocks than i learned in class, but we all know i wasn't the brightest fucking bulb on the tree, here's hoping that the I-mac is a better student than his daddy was...