I had agreed to take care of my girlfriend’s son, Vincent, over the weekend. A bright, happy boy of eight… being around him sometimes took me back to the days when my own son, Zachary, was that age. Vincent loves to read and had brought over a stack of his Captain Underpants books. I wondered if he was old enough to tackle Captain Courageous. I made a mental note to look into that later.

I’m at an age when I’m beginning to calculate how long it will be and how much money I’ll need to retire. My girlfriend is a decade or so younger and she had her only child rather late in life. So the folks that see Vincent and I on the street would assume that I was his grandfather, if not for the fact that I’m of a different race.

I was up on the ladder doing some touch-up painting on the ceiling when Vincent called out to me, “Whose is this?” He held out the thing as he looked up at me… rectangular blue plastic case, with a plate missing in the back, metal contacts and little springs visible.

“Oh, Zachary’s.” Zachary, now twenty-one, had long abandoned the Game Boy. Currently he is wandering through the foothills of adulthood.

Vincent blinked and his nostrils dilated, crinkling his nose slightly. A recurring tic, it resembled a small, wild animal sniffing the air for threats. His mother and I had discussed this and she’d already asked his pediatrician if it were cause for worry. He’d told her no.

I went back to my painting and soon anemic, vaguely-musical tones reached me up on the ladder. Like all boys, Vincent had instinctively known that the empty hole in the back of the Game Boy was for batteries. He’d found some somewhere in the house and was ensconced on the couch, pushing the little buttons with his thumbs as he gazed into the little screen.

My own son, Zachary, was still interested in video games, but more sophisticated ones, played on a computer. They all have absolutely no appeal to me. I’d much rather read or work in the yard, or if I’m really tired, watch the news or maybe the History Channel. I remembered the last time I’d flown, and my surprise at the number of twenty and even thirty-something businessmen, traveling on the company’s dime, who were playing games on their opened laptops. The thing I’d always enjoyed most about air travel was chatting to the person next to me or, if they were too tired or not interested, reading magazines or paperback books purchased in the terminal bookstore before boarding. I just can’t understand the appeal of these games and I worry about their strong attraction to kids. But then again, my nephew and his wife, both PhDs, have a Wii and other video games, and they seem to be able to enjoy the things without them taking over their lives.

I told Vincent he could play with the Game Boy for a half-hour and then we would go out into the open air and see the real world vs. the virtual, the big screen vs. the tiny.

Later, I cleaned the paintbrush and closed the paint can tightly. I called Vincent and we went down into the garage and pumped up the tires on the bikes. We pushed them outside and soon we were off; brisk winter air, scented with woodsmoke, washing over us as we pedaled past houses and back yards, bare trees, our tires occasionally crunching a path through mounds of crisp golden, red and brown leaves. About two thirds of the way to the downtown plaza Vincent started coughing and sputtering.

He stopped and I pulled up beside him. “What’s the matter?” I said.

“I’m tired.”

He coughed again, wheezing slightly. I thought that maybe if we just pushed on at a slower pace he might overcome it. We were only three blocks from the plaza. I convinced him to try. But less than a block later he stopped and got off his bicycle.

“You okay?” I asked as I came up. I began to worry. He had always seemed healthy, but maybe he had caught something. Commentators on the TV and radio were constantly warning about the dangers that today’s kids were exposed to… faulty car seats, child molesters, autism, asthma.

Maybe he was having some kind of asthma-like attack? Old memories of taking my own son to the doctor and administering his Provental in a nebulizer came back to me. Then I realized I’d neglected to ask Vincent’s mom for his insurance card. Would the hospital even treat him if I had to bring him in?

“I’m tired,” Vincent said again.

We were just two blocks away from the plaza. “You want to walk the rest of the way while I push the bikes?”

“Okay,” he said, his nostrils dilating reflexively, crinkling his nose.

We soon reached the plaza---a one city-block square of well-tended green grass with paved footpaths, benches, and a little playground in one corner---surrounded by shops and restaurants, a Peet’s, a Starbuck’s, and a great discount bookstore. Vincent immediately went over to the playground and I sat on the low wall surrounding it, which was studded with stainless steel brackets every three or so feet to discourage skateboarders. The plaza’s crown jewel, a concrete bandstand from which local groups and musicians entertained every Saturday night, spring, summer and fall, was deserted. When not in use, classical music issued from the PA system 24/7, making the place undesirable for teenagers looking for a place to hang out.

I took out my note pad and pen to make some notes about something I’d been working on. I turned and saw that Vincent was just sitting in the sawdust in front of the jungle gym. A few toddlers were climbing the plastic stairs up to the slide, their moms and dads standing protectively by.

“You okay?” I asked Vincent.

“I’m tired,” he said, but this time all the pulmonary rattling and sputtering was gone. “Can we go home?”

“Why? We just got here.”

“I want to play with the Game Boy.”

God, I thought, it’s a beautiful day, we’re at the playground, and he wishes he was home sitting on the couch. When I was his age, friends would knock on your door. “Can Paul come out and play?” they’d ask your mom or dad. And out you went … to play for hours… until your mom or dad called you for lunch or dinner.

“Well,” I said, “not now. We’ll leave in an hour or so.”

“Awww,” he said with sad acceptance.

Perhaps because I wasn't his father, Vincent usually listened to me. He really wanted a father and that gave me an advantage. And, conversely, I felt more responsible for him the longer I spent time with his mom and him.

“All my friends have Game Boys,” Vincent said, “but my mom won’t buy me one.” Twenty-five years ago I might have been on his side. Now I only thought her wise. My son had friends who had became lazy shut-ins who did nothing but play video games. When I was young I’d known kids who had become alcoholic or druggie shut-ins. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of difference between them all.

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure she has her reasons.” He turned away.

A boy close in age to Vincent bounded into the little sawdust corral of the playground like a dog just released from the leash. Vincent’s head came up and he got to his feet. Soon he and the other boy were running around the jungle gym in a game of tag. The parents kept a wary eye on them and their own toddlers who watched the older boys’ game with smiling interest.

I looked back at the green and the trees, the few strollers. Two restaurants, a Spaghetti Factory and a Cheesecake Factory, anchored the plaza from opposite corners. I hoped they’d weather the current recession. All over town there were more and more vacant storefronts. Although Zachary was going to junior college, he hadn’t been able to find a part time job in six months. Back when I graduated high school, anybody that wanted a factory job could get one. Now all those jobs have gone overseas. I doubt they’ll ever come back. But young people today would turn up their noses at factory jobs anyway. They’d rather work at Blockbuster and Starbucks and make half the money. Funny. There’s one for the sociologists to puzzle over.

An awful racket erupted a block away. A half dozen or more of sixty-something guys, some with bald (not shaved) heads, and all with facial hair, had started their ten thousand dollar and up Harley motorcycles outside the upscale Boutique Brewery. They revved their engines excessively as they put on their chromed Nazi helmets. With practiced scowls and hard, inscrutable looks, they rumbled in procession down Main Street.

After the parade had passed I returned my attention to Vincent. He and the other boy were playing a new game… jumping from the top slide platform, a height of about six feet, to land and roll in the sawdust like little Airborne Rangers in training. A trio of teen girls with long, scalloped blonde tresses and shape-accentuating jeans, passed on the path. They peered into their opened cell phones as they walked with what appeared to be deep longing on their faces. They lit on the wall about eight feet away. A moment later, the tallest of the three, with the longest hair, their leader, began directing an angry tirade into her little phone. “I don’t care what the fuck you say, you psycho bitch,” she said, “I don’t take that fuckin’ shit from nobody, so fuck you!” Her two followers gazed into their little screens with sad expressions that seemed to indicate that whoever was on the other end of that virtual wire deserved every bit of what they were getting.

The tirade continued with lots of variations on “fuck you, bitch.” Lewd and crude ghetto culture has been mainstreamed and is embraced by many people and tolerated by most, but it still bothered me. I was about to get up and ask her to cool it when they got up and began walking off.

I went back to writing in my little note pad as people walked past. I felt a little self conscious about it. You don’t see anybody writing in a paper pad anymore. You hardly see anybody reading a book or a paper in the park anymore either. Instead everyone is screen gazing or talking into their little phones.

I turned around to check on Vincent. He was at that moment saying goodbye to the other boy who was walking off with his mother or aunty. Vincent came over to me. “Can we go back now?” he said.

“Not yet,” I said. His brows moved together and his nostrils flared and tasted the cool air. “Not until we’ve had a cookie.” He smiled.

I took him into Starbucks. I got a latte and we both had a Madeleine Petite. Twenty minutes later we were back on the bikes and peddling North. The Madeleine sat well with Vincent because there was no more coughing or complaining and we made it all the way back to the house without stopping.

When we got inside Vincent asked if he could have the old Game Boy. “I’ve never seen Zachary playing with it,” he said.

“I know. But he still might want to keep it.”

“Awww. If he doesn’t, can I have it?”

“Well, you’ll have to ask your mom. She’s still the boss, you know.”

“Awww,” he said.

I hoped she'd say no.

TAGS: fatherhood, Paul Clayton, Western Civilization

PAUL CLAYTON writes historical fiction, mainstream fiction, literary fiction, and short stories, as well as opinion pieces and humor. In 2001 his fictionalized account of his tour in Vietnam was named a finalist in the Frankfurt eBook Awards. He has lived in the SF Bay area for the last twenty-five years. You can read more of his writing HERE.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Memoir, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.