My son, ask for thyself another Rodimus, for that which I leave is too small for thee

The other day the Prince of Macrocrania and I were in the robot room and I began to wonder what this toy robot obsession says about me as a father. I know what it says about me as a person-that I'm a big dork. But what messages will I be sending to my son when he's older and he starts interpreting the meanings behind my actions? When he starts trying to understand me as a person through the things I have done in the past, what does having an assload of toy robots say about the values I have and the things I think are important? Do all these old toys send the message that being fixated on pop culture fads is a worthwhile way to spend one's life? Will he even give a crap in the first place?

I think that as a parent it is important to still keep my hobbies. I don't think my son would want me to stop watching Voltron cartoons just because he came around. When I was little my dad had a lot of hobbies like watching old Clint Eastwood movies and riding his horse. I never wanted him to give those up because I saw how hobbies can make a person happy, although I did think the movies Clint Eastwoood did with that gorilla were all pretty lame and cleaning the horse poop in the stables sucked.

If leading by example guarantees my kid won't be a crack smoking, serial killing, Teddy Ruxpin rapist then I'm doing good. I never did drugs or kill more than one person and all my sex with Teddy Ruxpin was totally consentual. But I did make the decision last week that my son won't be playing with toy guns although I grew up with Walther P-38 Megatron. I don't call that hypocritical, I call it experience based parental policy making. Being part black already makes him about 20,000 times more likely to get shot by the police, I don't need his toys to give the po-po a reason.

Maybe it doesn't matter what I do as long as I show my son that maniacal devotion to a pointless hobby is actually a lot of fun. My dad's hobbies taught me the value of having a good time. I didn't find the mysteries of the universe in the horse poo and I doubt my son will search for the meaning of life in a toy named Rodimus Prime. Ultimately I don't know what my son will think of my toy robots or what he'll learn about humanity from my behaviors. All I know is that sometimes my dad would take us out to the desert and he'd shoot televisions that people illegally dumped with his rifle. As a teen I used to think it was a metaphor that could be interpreted as one man's rejection of pop culture, but now I see that my dad just did all sorts of crazy shit just for the hell of it.