When Worlds Collide

‘I decided to be her biggest fan,’ noted a buddy of mine.  We were talking about his daughter and her ever-changing interests.  Smart man.  

So I took his advice and went to the motocross with my son.  I’ve never been to one of these things, but he’s into motorcycles, so we went because I’m a fan of him.   With multiple kids, I’ve found myself at fishing conventions, dance recitals and elbow deep in legos.  It’s great. It can be really uncomfortable, but good things are.  

The motocross was held at the big arena in town, but we wanted something a bit more hands-on, so we got tickets to the fan fest. We took the train into town because the traffic was so bad, but it seems to be bad all the time now.  The fan fest was next door at the convention center, so we worked our way toward the smell of two-stroke engines.

What quickly became clear is that my son and I weren’t dressed appropriately.  I mean, we were comfortable, but we weren’t dressed like anyone else around us.  I didn’t really notice until we got closer.  The dress code seemed to become more uniform and less like what we were wearing.  As we found our way to the central hall of the convention center, I noticed a sign and a lady directing traffic.  ‘Exhibit Hall A: Car show. Exhibit Hall B: Motorcycles.  Exhibit Hall C: Hollywood Dance competition’.  

Hall A, the Car Show, was an interesting mix of generally three groups: 1) yuppies in graphic tees looking to appear ironic and spend some of last year’s bonus, 2) the polished grease monkey crowd seeking the performance they’d dreamed of in their own machines and 3) the nostalgic crowd, generally men in motorized chairs with veteran hats, remembering life before Vietnam.  And they were all headed toward the same place. 

Down Hall C, the dance competition folks were uniformly dressed with big hair, tight pants, no shoes and large suitcases, primping and preening in the hallway.  Seemed like a big bag for such little clothing, but what did I know.  That wasn’t our hall. 

Hall B was our Hall, even if the jury was still out if these were our people.  This was the crowd from across the state line for their annual migration to the big city, complete with the clean sleeveless flannel shirt and church jeans (even if the Skoal can ring had already made its mark).  I grew up with these people.  They’re lovely.

My son and I weren’t sure where we fit, so we wandered.   

Events attract a certain type of people.  The bulk of the people at the ball game like sports (or like people that like sports) and the same goes for the Opera and the coffee shop.  We’re drawn to things we like and people like us are drawn there too.  And so some part of me had to admit that even with sleeves on my shirt, these were my people — people here for a show and people here for sons (and daughters and boyfriends and wives).  Different economic backgrounds, geographies, family situations all converge around similar likes, neutralizing the differences.  It’s fantastic.  

So as we left, we noticed the Hollywood Dance crowd mingle with the Motocross crowd as the events were letting out around the same time. Fascinating. Suddenly the clarity of ‘people like me’ met head on with ’not like me.’  Side glances that suggested wonder became full-on, kid-at-the-zoo-watching-big-cats-poo staring competitions.  Even if he’s from the city and she’s from the country, we’re both here for the cars, right?  It’s rare that the convergence of different people meet in the same place for different reasons at the same time.  There were no demonstrations or outbursts in today’s social experiment, just wonder.  Wonder at who they were and where they came from and what brought them here.  

The convergence of people like me doing things like me was struck with people not like me doing things I don’t like.  But this went beyond the Socs and the Greasers because outside the door was the marathon with an entirely different set of people.  ‘Us and them’ became some kind of real world science experiment. 

And so my son and I walked out of one crowd of people, through a different crown on our way to a third.  No judgement.  No uncertainty.  Just observation.  

But given a free ticket to anyone of these events in the future, which would I choose?  Which would he choose?  Worlds collided and we were each faced with people-like-us and people-not-like-us.  So I decided to be a fan of my son.  Just like every other father and brother and mother and girlfriend did with those they loved, whether look at two wheels or two feet.