I took Boy to the Hear Music store on the Santa Monica Promenade yesterday and let him burn his own CD from their collection. As we departed I promised him I'd blast his cuts, and so it was that in Venice at the giant traffic circle as a black man in dreads crosswalked in front of our stopped, blaring vehicle that I almost crumbled. You see at that particular moment the song bumping our trunk was 'Larger Than Life' by the Backstreet Boys.
I survived the moment and suppressed the desire to turn down the volume or change the the Paul Schwartz that I bought for me, but then waxed philosophical. It was a gift for him, this loud joyride that included BEP's "My Humps", ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue" which is apparently his very favorite song these days. I'm letting him represent.
But the Backstreet Boys? Damn.
It is perfectly clear to me that the only thing I have to worry about with regard to my son's upbringing is the collapse of society and my own financing of his minority. He still wants to be a musician and a chef, he still bangs out the As in Math and Science, he still washes the dishes and vacuums the house without making faces and he still leans over lovingly onto my shoulder when we watch TV together. In other words, he shows no sign whatsoever of all those things American teenaged boys are feared for. He is by no means perfect - he's only about 75% of a Johnny Quest, but he's got character, the kind of character one would expect of a kid raised in an unbroken world. His world is unbroken and the hardest challenges he faces are verb agreement and making more friends than he already has.
There have been many before me who have held the conceit of being 'the last real black man'. And I've read stories about people who feel compelled to take their suburban kids back to the 'hood and ghetto to 'toughen them up'. Boy knows how to slapbox (well, he's not afraid to slapbox with me but he hasn't touched me yet) and excels in the game of Kung Fu Grip. But I'm not interested in introducing him to the street injustice that made such skills mandatory for me. And yet I find him remarkably absent in the kind of attitude common in black boys growing up when I did. Call it 'mannish'; the ability to look at adults (including and especially cops, merchants and teachers) straight in the eye and talk shit, the incredible vigilance for personal respect borne out of marathon games of 'open chest', 'suicide' and 'bb britches' where the punishment for laxity is a punch in the chest. Is my son soft or am I just overly hard?
The answer to that question is relative to the time and circumstance, and yet in raising our children we all aim to give them something of transcendant value. So I will remain comfortable and confident in their ability to manage their friendships and their nascent spirituality, their respectfulness and their smiles. Boy is no trouble, and he's not headed there. As much as I might grumble about his taste for the Backstreet Boys, I'm sure there are parents out there who would give their arm to have their kids prefer them over Fiddy or Eminem. There is no question that Boy is a patriot. I'm sure it comes easier for him than it did for me and for that I'm proud and grateful. Yesterday as he was ironing my shirts and singing Toby Keith, I figured that after 12 years, the odds are in our favor.
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