While the PC language police find it insensitive to notice, boys and girls are quite different.
AUTO: How one simple word changed my life
Here is my attempt to evidence my young son’s development of language (and as always, acknowledging the multitude of consequences from my crime).
While the PC language police find it insensitive to notice, boys and girls are quite different. As a father, I am proud to say my son evidenced the difference with his very first real word:
AUTO! First true word !— AUTO
His fascination with these magical mechanical marvels was extended via toy, cartoon, TV, video, and picturebook. Pure JOY lite his face as he pointed out the window.
Once recognized, he began to categorize vehicles by type (car, truck, wagon, bus or tracked) and use (fun, family, racing, work, or war). The swelling pride only a father can feel stuck me as I watched my son organize his toy vehicles by make and model. Decade by decade they rolled on in orderly rows with his perfect focus. This ability would grow over the years of his young short life.
Where in the synapsis storm firing in his developing brain, did comprehension come?
The role of language in the development of human societies and civilizations is artfully expressed in Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech and academically proofed in Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back.
As with most young children, he would fight sleep as a foe; screaming “NO” to beds and naps. In desperation for my own sanity and his well being, I would plunk him in a car seat and set off on a sleep-ride adventure. Within minutes the rumble of the engine and hypnotic crunching of the tires would rock him to blissful sleep. The slight tangy smell of exhaust his last memory before releasing self to dream.
Mystery and magic exist in both the dream and the conscious realm as well. Evidenced by the appearance of those diesel dinosaurs that would roam the quiet residential streets in the early morning hours. As with whales, they would surface on rare occasions and always make a display of themselves — belching exhaust with a deep diesel roar. You could anticipate their momentous sighting by the appearance of their food source; those black, blue and green bins magically left on the sidewalk one day a week.
The Dragon of vehicles, garbage trucks, were studied by my son as he sought to solve the mysteries of purpose and routes. They were magically different with steering wheels on the wrong side and drivers uniformed in orange jumpsuits; servants to the beast as they fed their master a steady diet of black, blue and green.
We shared the AUTO game as he grew thereby satisfying the twin male compulsions of competition and hard data. My son focused his attention on the elusive and exotic keeping score on the way: VW beetles +1, electric car+5 Older than 1970 +10, Diesel Dragons +25, Andrea a special bonus for school buses
(the game of competition + the need to keep score in our meritocracy essential lessons to learn young).
He would sift all he saw through his expanding mind: to be organized in a mystical procession of modes of motored motion. The reward for winning the game, to sit in the driver’s seat, hands at the 10/2 positions on the steering wheel prepared to drive — only waiting to grown so he could reach the peddles of power — oh and HONK HONK THE HORN!
We shared dreams. Big plans only a father and son can share. I would teach my boy as I had learned to control the powerful monster with hundreds of horses under its hood. He would be its master to command it alone with the turning of a wheel and pushing of peddles. So many carefully salted plans to learn the sources of POWER & CONTROL as a father can teach a son with action and grace. The reward, to share the freedom of the jet-black roads tethering cities together across vast expanses of wilderness. Father and son, yet never to be done, my dear sweet son.
Your father forgot the rules of POWER & CONTROL and must serve sentence for many long years as a consequence. You must learn the lessons only a father should teach from someone else.
The role of language in the development of human societies and civilizations is artfully expressed in Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech and academically proofed in Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back.
If you are curious about prison life and the real work that goes on there, read The San Quentin News or listen to Ear Hustle.
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