A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers Page A

but he ’ s still confused, and it ’ s hard doing any of this while trying not to careen off the road and into the Pacific and I guess in a way the gestures look like I want him to eat the radio. But Jesus, he should be able to figure this out. He isn ’ t cooperating. Or he could be dumb. Is he dumb?
    Fuck it—I go solo. I hit the Steve Perry notes, I do the Steve Perry vibrato. I can do these things because I am an extraordinary singer.
    “ Can I sing or what? ” I yell.
    “ What? ” he yells.
    The windows are open, too.
    “ I said, ‘ Can I sing or what? ’”
    He shakes his head.
    “ What do you mean? ” I yell. “ I can sing, g^dammit. ”
    He rolls up his window.
    “ What did you say? I didn ’ t hear you, ” he says.
    “ I said, can I sing or what? ”
    “ No. ” He smiles hugely. “ You can ’ t sing at all. ”
    I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant—children so seldom know what is good for them—I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time—Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy—and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me. He is mine, and you cannot stop me, cannot stop us. Try to stop us, you pussy! You can ’ t stop us from singing, and you can ’ t stop us from making fart sounds, from putting our hands out the window to test the aerodynamics of different hand formations, from wiping the contents of our noses under the front of our seats. You cannot stop me from having Toph, who is eight, steer, on a straightaway, while I take off my sweatshirt because suddenly it ’ s gotten really fucking hot. You cannot stop us from throwing our beef jerky wrappers on the floor, or leaving our unfolded laundry in the trunk for, fuck, eight days now, because we have been busy. You cannot stop Toph from leaving a half-full cardboard orange juice container under the seat, where it will rot and ferment and make the smell in the car intolerable, with that smell ’ s provenance remaining elusive for weeks, during which the windows must be kept open at all times, until finally it is found and Toph is buried to his neck in the backyard and covered in honey—or should have been—for his role in the debacle. We cannot be stopped from looking with pity upon all the world ’ s sorry inhabitants, they unblessed by our charms, unchallenged by our trials, unscarred and thus weak, gelatinous. You cannot stop me from telling Toph to make comments about and faces at the people in the next lane.
    ME: Look at this loser.
    HE: What a spaz\
    me: Look at this one.
    he: Oh my God.
    ME: A dollar to wave at this guy.
    HE: How much?
    me: A buck.
    HE: That ’ s not enough.
    ME: Okay, five bucks to give this guy a thumbs up.
    he: Why a thumbs up?
    ME: Cause he ’ s got it goin ’ on!
    HE: Okay. Okay.
    ME: Why didn ’ t you do it?
    HE: I just couldn ’ t.
    It ’ s unfair. The matchups, Us v. Them (or you) are unfair. We are dangerous. We are daring and immortal. Fog whips up from under the cliffs and billows over the highway. Blue breaks from beyond the fog and sun suddenly screams from the blue.
    To our right is the Pacific, and because we are hundreds of feet above the ocean, often with nothing in the way of a guardrail between us and it, there is sky not only above us but below us, too. Toph does not like the cliff, is not looking down, but we are driving in the sky, with clouds whipping over the road, the sun flickering through, the sky and ocean below. Only up here does the earth look round, only up here does the horizon dip at