Generation gap? What generation gap?

Feb 19, 2009

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Special to the Star

Hey! The Internet people are telling me that we've used up all our bandwidth for the month!" I hollered recently.

My son Ari, 14, looked up and blinked.

"Don't look at me. I don't download anything," he said. The Poor Sod ambled in.

"Can't be me. I bought a bunch of movies last month ... wait, what's the date?" He trundled off to find a calendar, and someplace to hide.

The search was narrowing and was about to end in Christopher's room. I really didn't want to investigate what a 17-year-old could possibly be downloading, did I?

"Have you been downloading stuff?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Not much. I'd tell you," he replied.

"You and Michael were futzing about last night ... what were you watching?" He hesitated.

"Top Gear," he shamefully confessed.

My son has been sucked into the sordid world of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. This crazy British trio test cars (professionally), crash cars (often), blast cars at unseeable speeds (whenever possible: see, crash cars), drink gin and tonics while driving a truck (and get spanked by the censors for doing it), run into trees (accidentally) and win lots of awards while they're at it.

My son and his friend, Michael, 18, believed they had discovered Top Gear, until Michael sat down at my computer and discovered a bunch of tabs linked to car reviews by Clarkson, who writes a regular ascerbic column here at Wheels.

"You like Jeremy Clarkson?" he asked me, new respect glowing in his eyes.

"He's hilarious. Here, read his piece on riding a motorcycle ..." I am a special fan of this piece, as Clarkson rides a motorcycle about as well as I do.

Clarkson is a polarizing character, which is precisely the reason I like him. When Wheels prints his stuff, the letters after are always definitive, and rarely in agreement. There's lots of beige out there – I'll take colour any day. The Top Gear lads are living most guys' – and some of us girls' – dream jobs. Driving every kind of car there is, in every imaginable way, and getting paid to be as outrageous as they like. Test a Bugatti against an airplane? Check. Test a pickup against a dog sled? Check. Blow apart a sedan behind a 747's engines? Check. Actually, the Clarkson family has been part of my family forever. Jeremy's mother invented the stuffed toy version of Paddington Bear.

Later that night, a sinister blue light crept up from under Christopher's door. Knowing he was breaking house rules -- the computer should have been off-- I flung open his door like some bathrobed ninja.

"What are you watching?" I demanded. I looked at the screen. Clarkson and crew were piloting a car stuck to a boat across the English Channel. They called it an "amphibious car," though it looked more like a shop project gone horribly wrong.

"This is awesome. I'm sorry, but you have to see this," he said, his eyes shining with happiness. My worst fears were realized.

My son wants to be Jeremy Clarkson when he grows up.

Lorraine Sommerfeld's column appears Thursdays on Wheels.ca. www.lorraineonline.ca

Toronto Star