I began to wonder if Yu-Gi-Oh! was a game of skill or a game of resources. If it was the latter, what did Cubby’s winning mean? I could not tell if he was a smart player, or if he was simply good at talking me into buying expensive winning cards. I spent some time learning about the game, but my question remained unanswered. One thing became clear: Whoever invented Yu-Gi-Oh! had created a real cash machine. In that game, the inventor was the genius, and all the rest of us were just marks, like suckers at a county fair. But when I expressed that opinion to Cubby, he got mad. I realized he could not even conceive of a simple game of skill or chance, like blackjack or poker. All he knew was trading card games, where acquiring (usually buying) rare cards was the key strategy, as opposed to skill.
Naturally, he disagreed with me on the topic of ability. He claimed his success with the games was due to his cleverness and his skill; according to him, I just bought him the basic equipment that allowed him to deploy those skills. He even went so far as to suggest that the games of my childhood were simplistic compared to what he did. With a start I realized I’d been worrying whether he was as smart as me, yet all the while Cubby had assumed the opposite. He figured he was Robison 2.0 and I was little more than a dumb brute from the cave compared to him. I wasn’t convinced, but his chutzpah was admirable.
I did have to concede that he applied a lot of brainpower to the game. Other players saw that too. That was obvious by the way he was greeted when I took him to the tournaments. He got a remarkable amount of respect for a kid who wasn’t as old as many of the cars in the parking lot. However, I still wished he’d apply himself to something with potential commercial value.
I watched and waited, and finally I was rewarded when he discovered chemistry. Even though I had taken him on countless explorations of technology, it was his mother who introduced him to chemistry through her interest in rockets. She had been a rocketeer as long as I’d known her. When we were twenty-two, she assembled Estes rocket kits on the kitchen table and flew them on weekends. She even fitted one of her rockets with a camera and shot pictures of us gazing up as the thing took off. In fact, one of her friends made her a wedding rocket, and we launched it when we got married. By the time Cubby came along, the wedding rocket was long lost, but she kept making more rockets and launched them with him.
I should have known that would turn out to be his passion. From the moment he was born, I don’t think he missed a single launch. When Cubby saw her getting ready, he latched on and didn’t let go until they recovered the pieces from some downrange field. He even brought the idea to school. He got together with an adventurous teacher and three other kids, and they founded a rocket club. The objective: put a rock into orbit by the time he turned sixteen.
Finally, Cubby became so interested in rocketeering that he put his trading cards aside. The change was remarkable to watch. I first thought his interest was similar to my own fascination with model car kits, where the challenge lay in gluing the rocket together in the manner of a skilled artisan. However, I quickly realized that I was just projecting myself into my Cubby-view, and that was wrong. He was interested in the physics of the thing and the chemical reactions. That was far more sophisticated than simple model making.
The rocket fascination had an interesting side effect. It sucked up so much of Cubby’s attention that he didn’t have time for his “little compulsions,” none of which he was even aware of. I’d been watching, and I noticed that the more he got wrapped up in rockets, the less he brushed, washed, and obsessed.
As I thought about it, I realized my dad had been the same way, in reverse. When I was younger I can’t remember him having any compulsive behaviors, but he was busy then. Now that he was older, and mostly retired, he had to check the house five times before he could leave. He checked the stove twice after turning it off once. He washed his hands a lot, too. Sometimes he and Cubby did it together. It was funny to watch, until I put it together. Then I wondered, What are my obsessive behaviors? Am I blind to them, or are they hidden because I’m busy? Or did obsessiveness skip a generation? I never talked to Cubby about those things, but I wondered a lot.
Meanwhile, the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards sat in his room, abandoned. I wondered if I could recover some of my investment by selling them on eBay. He must have divined my intentions, because he growled like a guard dog whenever I went near them and began closing the door to his room. I didn’t complain, though, because I saw chemistry as a special interest with a future, and I was delighted to see him studying. The cards could be gotten out and sold later, when he was launching a rocket or off at school.
He got a periodic table and the Handbook of Chemistry. He started reading, and telling me what rocket engines were made of and how they worked. He even asked about my experience with rockets, fireworks, and explosives. The changes had started, and Robison 2.0 was in beta!
Rockets, rocket fuel, and explosives make some kids dream of being astronauts. Not Cubby. He dreamed of becoming an organic chemist.
I wasn’t surprised that Cubby found explosives fascinating. Ever since my dad first showed me how to make rockets from baking soda, vinegar, and a pop-top bottle, I’ve felt the same way. It’s possible we are unusual, but I suspect every boy loves fireworks, deep down.
That’s especially true of boys who love chemistry. There are many uses for chemists in the adult world, but every teen chemist I have ever met thinks about one of two things: explosives or drugs. Given that choice, as a dad, I preferred the former.
There’s something irresistible about rockets powerful enough to light the sky and shake the ground. The bigger the blast, the more you feel it. I loved watching fireworks displays as a kid, so when I worked rock and roll as a young adult, I jumped at the chance to use them in our shows. That was where I discovered the real power of thunder. I already thought metaphorical thunder was cool. I loved it when the drummer rolled the heavy tom-toms or a timpani to make a point in a musical performance. Inspired by that, I created amplifiers that could deliver rock-and-roll thunder without self-destructing and punch the audience smack in the chest. I was proud of what I’d accomplished, and I thought I knew the state of the art, until the first time I saw KISS play a big civic center.
I knew KISS used a lot of pyro (pyro stands for pyrotechnics, another word for fireworks), but I had yet to see the band in action. Their show started like many others, as I stood at the control area with the crew. There were five of us on a little fenced island among a sea of fans. The producer hollered commands into the intercom as guitarist Paul Stanley leaned forward over the front of the stage to scream out his intro. “Do you people want a little bit of rock and roll? Shout it out loud!” With that, he lit into his guitar and the meters on the sound system swung all the way into the red. The band was playing the only way they knew: full throttle. That was the moment that pyro master Hank Schmel pushed the button, off to stage right, and the first of his bombs went off.
Before that moment I might have described the roll of the big drums as thunderous, but after, I knew the truth: Real thunder comes from the sky or out of the barrel of a cannon. That’s what Hank had, sunk into the stage on both sides. Four-inchers, stubby versions of the guns on old navy destroyers. When they fired, it was as if time stopped. The flash lit the room, and the power of it rocked us back on our feet
That’s how KISS started every show. It left me with a profound appreciation of the power of explosives, and a good sense of comfort using them. When I returned home, I brought knowledge of flash powder, rockets, smoke bombs, and all sorts of other loud, bright, and powerful special effects. My KISS experiences helped me to transform the shows of many other bands and even a few discos. They also helped me liven up several Halloweens.
There’s nothing like a sack of explosives to brighten up your day.
People my age who work in special effects, or mining, or demolition have a lifetime of blowing things up, but my connection to fireworks faded as I got older and stopped producing music. And Cubb
y’s only exposure to fireworks was watching them on the Fourth of July. He liked the displays, but they hadn’t yet affected him in the visceral way KISS pyrotechnics got to me, many years before. In retrospect, I see that’s probably because I didn’t let him close enough to really feel the magic. It wasn’t for lack of his trying. Cubby asked me to buy him bottle rockets, sparklers, and bangers, but I was wary and kept them at a safe distance. Some dads hand their kids M-80s as soon as they learn to walk. Not me. I’d seen my share of accidents and injuries, and there was no way I’d let my tyke get burned or get a finger blown off.
My agricultural grandparents had raised me with a real fear of losing body parts. Farmers know that risk all too well. Hooking implements to the tractor, if you weren’t careful, could cost you a finger. And pyro was even more dangerous. With fireworks, if you made a mistake, you lost a whole arm, or more.
“Yep,” they’d say, “Billy Joe ain’t with us no more. Blew hisself up with dynamite while digging a fish pond.” The old men always told me stories like that, whenever I went to the hardware store to get supplies for my grandpa. They kept the dynamite in back, stacked up in cases by the Moxie and Dr Pepper soda.
Now I was older, and times have changed. You need a federal license to buy dynamite, and stores have to keep it separate from the soft drinks. Lesser explosives like fireworks are actually illegal in Massachusetts. Not that that mattered much to an outlaw like me, but it was one more reason to tell Cubby no when he wanted his own rockets after seeing a July 4 celebration.
Cubby finally managed to circumvent my caution when he turned ten and his mom once again took him to Mexico. She was finishing her doctorate in modern-day Mayan culture, and she and Cubby spent most of that summer in the mountains of Chiapas. Chiapas is no fancy tourist resort. It’s beautiful and wild high country, full of drugs, lawlessness, Zapatista rebels, and the Mexican army. You are on the border of Central America, but the country is so high that you need a sweater at night. A hundred miles away, on the coast, people bask in hundred-degree heat, but the mornings up there are fifty degrees and foggy. The countryside is broken up into little plots of land that are cultivated by innumerable subsistence farmers. Some of the fields are on slopes so steep you struggle to walk them, yet they produce crops. The roads are interrupted by vicious speed bumps they call topes. If you race over them, they’ll break your suspension, but if you stop and crawl over them, you may get robbed by predators lurking in the bushes. Every Sunday, the villagers get drunk and pass out like corpses, right in the middle of the highway. The native people—most of the population—are descendants of the Maya, who worship the old gods in mountaintop temples accessible only on foot or by mule.
The villa Cubby’s mom rented was in San Cristóbal, a town where American academics had formed a sort of expatriate community. Little Bear got acquainted with the other adults and Cubby made friends with their kids. His favorites were two brothers, Ben and Jordan. Ben was three years older than Cubby. Jordan was his same age. The kids hit it off immediately. They quickly discovered a shared love of video games, toy guns, and explosives—even pretend ones—and all those things were readily available in Mexico.
Cubby’s mom gave him a ten-dollar allowance every week. Ben had some money, too. One afternoon, when Cubby’s mom and Jordan’s dad were distracted, the two kids went shopping. The market in San Cristóbal was unlike anything Cubby had ever seen. Vendors sold counterfeit sneakers, fake Gucci handbags, the latest movies, and all the hot video games. And in the back … fireworks, smoke bombs, and rockets. Best of all were the prices. Ten bucks got them a whopping sackful. The kids embarked on an orgy of fireworks buying.
Meanwhile, I was back in Massachusetts, Cubby’s mom was studying, and Ben and Jordan’s dad was engrossed in his own research. With no one to keep a close eye on them, the kids ran wild. They loved it.
They began experimenting right away. They launched objects into the sky and attacked targets on the ground. They did what any boys would do, given explosives, summer days, and minimal adult supervision. It was a formula for disaster, but they were all basically gentle kids, with no desire to hurt people or animals, or to blow the doors off houses. And they were not desperate enough for money to try blowing up safes or a bank vault. They just wanted to make some noise and have some fun.
Some kids would have become bored after a few days, or run out of things to detonate, but Cubby and Ben were clever and resourceful. They never ran out of new things to blast. Ben had a new dog, and his dad expected him to clean up after it. Thanks to their newfound arsenal, Ben was able to vaporize the dog poop rather than pick it up, to the delight of all the children except those unfortunate enough to get splattered by high-velocity feces.
The kids had definitely gotten the pyrotechnics bug. Once they mastered the basics of usage, they moved on to the next step: research and development. Even as a ten-year-old, Cubby was certain of his ability to improve things, especially those that caught his fancy. So Ben and Cubby took their fireworks apart and reconstituted them in different and more aggressive forms. They even staged an exhibition, to show the adults their mastery of the craft. It was clear that they were learning, and I hoped they were safe when I heard the news on the phone. They were certainly exuberant.
Unfortunately, their exuberance and noise attracted the attention of a pack of unfriendly indigenous children. The urchins began shelling them with rotten fruit and calling them names. Cubby and Ben’s position in the street quickly became untenable. Realizing that, they scampered to safety behind the walls of their house (most houses in San Cristóbal sit behind high walls). Unfortunately, their attackers continued the assault by climbing trees on the adjacent property and tossing epithets and projectiles over the wall.
The kids were at a loss for a minute, but then they had an inspiration. Seizing a handful of smoke bombs, they began lobbing them at the rock-throwing urchins. They could not see over the wall, but the noises suggested their smoke was having the desired effect. Sensing they had the upper hand, Cubby, Ben, and Jordan then opened the door to the sidewalk and emerged with a handful of bottle rockets and a lighter. Grinning demonically, the three boys launched a fusillade of rockets at the bullies. With missiles whizzing everywhere, the attackers ran for the hills, the wind in their faces and their asses on fire. Technology and pyrotechnics carried the day. Cubby and Jordan were very proud of themselves.
There was only one problem. A stray rocket flew into the neighbor’s garage and lodged in a car, and its owner complained to Ben and Jordan’s father. In the United States things might have escalated into a lawsuit, and in the Sierra Madre someone might have been shot, but in San Cristóbal, Chiapas, everyone ultimately concluded that boys will be boys, and the matter ended with a chuckle and a drink.
That night, Cubby’s mom reminded him about my interest in pyrotechnics and told him stories of the stuff she and I had made for KISS and other bands. Cubby was impressed, and determined to outdo us with his own achievements. He was nothing if not competitive.
Cubby came home from Mexico with a new interest that elbowed aside Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards once and for all. I was proud of what he’d learned, but Massachusetts just isn’t a very fireworks-friendly place. By then, though, Cubby had discovered the Internet, and he’d learned that fireworks were legal only forty miles north, in New Hampshire. As soon as he found that out, the requests began: “Can we go get some, please?” He was very persistent, and he was just getting started. July 4 was coming, and there was no way he was going to let it go by without fireworks. The bigger, the better.
The rockets of summer came and went with the Fourth of July. When fall came, Cubby was headed for the ninth grade. He’d be a high school student. The idea was hard to imagine, but there it was. My little boy was growing up. One way I knew that was that he discovered Eminem, the rapper. I had never even heard of the guy, but now his music filled our house: loud, punchy, and belligerent. All of a sudden, I understood what a generation gap sounded li
ke. It was Cubby’s first expression of musical taste—a sure sign of a developing mind. Houseplants and dogs, after all, do not choose the stations on the radio, though chimpanzees sometimes do.
Soon the Star Wars posters came off his walls, to be replaced by crude, brutish images of thugs in gold chains. Gangsta. If only it had stopped there.
I had become accustomed to delivering Cubby to his mom’s on Tuesday and getting him back on Saturday in essentially the same condition as when I’d handed him over. Eminem changed all that. One day when I arrived to pick him up, his hair had turned yellow-white and was twisted into points. “Wow,” I said. “What happened to you?”
He had become a little Eminem, just like the poster in his room. “My mom helped dye it,” he said proudly. I didn’t know what to say. Clearly, my parental influence was waning. I had never had white spiky hair, nor had I ever recommended such a thing for him. The closest I had come was suggesting that we point his ears Vulcan style, like Mr. Spock on Star Trek, and he declined that. As we drove home, he began reciting the lyrics to the latest rap, which he had proudly deciphered and was now bound and determined to share with anyone who would listen. His mom was probably relieved that I was taking him away.
Meanwhile, another decision point regarding Cubby’s schooling had arrived. He’d outgrown Montessori and ended up at South Hadley Middle School, which he hated. With his time there at an end, we had an opportunity to put him in a high school he might like a little better, or at least hate a little less. However, bad as South Hadley was, we still weren’t sure we should try our luck elsewhere. Maybe the new school would be worse. Other people might have embraced change, and jumped into a new educational program with both feet, but we were not that way. Neither, it seemed, was Cubby. If anything, he was more a creature of routine and habit than either of us.
Raising Cubby Page 18
