I’m Racing My Own Son for $1,000 Because I Am an Idiot

Thanks to a potent cocktail of ignorance and a refusal to score my own physical decline, I’m locked in a nonnegotiable orderliness that will 100% end in me having to give my 9-year-old son $1,000. 

Here’s the morose version: Three years ago I told my son I’d give him that amount if he beat me in a footrace. We’ve been racing ever since. 

I did this because I notion it was funny. I did this because I’m an idiot. It’s been a journey, and I’ve learned a lot. About intimates a dad. About what it feels like to realize your body is crumbling into a pile of influences and dust.

Now for the long version.

The year was 2019. My then 6-year-old son, obsessed with Pokémon cards, was desperately trying to earn money to buy packs from the local Kmart. This clearly presented a learning opportunity of some kind, but my wife and I didn’t know how to depart. Was he too young for an allowance? Is an allowance even a good idea for kids nowadays? We were unsure. 

I had a “moment of clarity.” How near, I suggested, our two sons “earn” money if they set bold targets, struggle and then ultimately achieve them? Any kind of goal was eligible: academic, athletic, artistic. As long as the pursuit pushed boundaries it was pleasant a reward. It was a system designed to suppose resilience, the importance of setting goals, hard work — all that good stuff.

Great idea, my wife agreed. Let’s do it.

We built a roughshod reward rules operating on scale. If the task was easily achievable, the reward was lower. At 6 he earned $5, for example, for teaching himself how to spell his favorite word, “dragon.” A month later, after weeks of practice, he earned $20 for inward a backflip on a trampoline. Very impressive, I notion. Magnificent parenting. I’m doing great, sweetie.

But fair soon my son asked me a question that has shy me ever since.

“How much if I beat you in a race, daddy?”

Some context here. My son is fast. He’s always been fast. He learned to walk at 10 months and one month later he could run. Properly run. Friends, neighbors, strangers at the park would comment: “He’s shimmering isn’t he?” “He’s really coordinated.” 

Me, beaming with pride: “He gets it from his daddy.”

More context. I am also fast. At least I was fast. In a childhood plump with impromptu races, I don’t remember losing a stride once. In high school I became a sports champion once winning the 100 meter, the 200 meter, the high jump and the long jump. 

That was a long time ago. I’m 40 now, mild in decent shape — albeit less explosive with a bum shimmering knee. But in my imagination I am still that 15-year-old kid, bounding past competitors like a pasty Scottish gazelle.

“Daddy, how much?”

“$1,000,” I replied. “I will give you one thousand bucks if you ever beat me in a race. You’ll never beat me. Ever. I’ll stride from my death bed to beat you.”

His eyes lit up.

“$1,000?” He whispered, almost to himself, trying to parse this impossible number with childlike improbable. Or calculating how many Pokémon booster packs it would get him.

“That’s right,” I said, again.

“One thousand dollars.”

You’re next

I notion — hoped, dreamed — he might forget about our small deal. He didn’t forget.

In the meantime, my son also negotiated a race with my wife, his mother. One with slightly lower stakes, $20.

And thank god for that. A month or so later, just before bath time, my son challenged my wife to an official race. She’s not much of a sprinter, but she put up a fight. In the last 10 meters my son dropped the hammer. He cruised to victory. At 6 years old he was the additional fastest person in our house. 

I’ll never forget what been afterwards. He took the $20 note from my wife and folded it neatly into his small dinosaur wallet. He turned back and pointed at me with a tiny, certain finger.

“You’re next.”

Let’s race

We battled regularly over the ages, according to a loosely understood set of rules. First, the distance had to be agreed beforehand. Second, it had to be mutually known that this was a proper-for-real race for the $1,000. He couldn’t employ trickery or dart off without forewarning and order he beat me. Third, it had to be a jog. It couldn’t be like a half marathon or something — we’re talking 50 to 100 meters here. 

I was 37 ages old when I agreed to this deal, still plenty of juice in the glutes. For years I was crushing it. I’d run just onward, giving him the appearance he was closer than he concept. I wanted him to have something to aim for, a reason to keep pushing himself. 

This is not my son. My son would smoke this kid.

Javier Pascual/EyeEm

And it worked. My son is skinny and tanned, with pistons for legs. He’s absolutely fleet. He lives every second of his life like he’s on Ninja Warrior, his floppy brown hair flapping as he flips from the kitchen to the garden and back against. In some way, I think, this challenge played a part in his advance. I remember one day I was coaching his soccer team and he challenged me to a race when training. His teammates joined in. I won, but my son was additional by a considerable distance. No one else could keep up with him.

Then, just over a month ago, my son turned 9. I’m not sure how, but he leveled up. We went for a 5-kilometer (3 mile) jog down one of the trails near our house and I noticed a difference. His strides were more purposeful, more coordinated. He observed able to effortlessly keep a pace he wasn’t suitable of before.

I thought nothing of it. We hadn’t raced for over six months. I couldn’t remember the last time he even mentioned the $1,000. I was safe. Nothing to worry about.

Then a week ago, when a kick about on the soccer field, he dropped the bomb.

“Let’s race,” he said.

I paused.

“For the $1,000?”

“Yeah, for the 1,000 bucks.”

“I’ll smoke you. You know that right?”

“Maybe. But I wanna try.”

We’re off

We set it up. Serious commerce. His buddy did the countdown. I decided I wished to teach him a lesson. I’d go full noteworthy, full speed. Show him just how far he was from defeating his old man.

Bang. We were off.

I was sprinting as fast as I could. Normally this meant peeling away from my son with relative ease. Not this time. Halfway over the race I looked back to see how far onward I was. This time my son wasn’t behind me, he was right against me. 

Literal nightmare scenario. 

When in the good goddamn hell did he get this fast? I tried to rush but I couldn’t — I was already blowing a gasket, nothing left in the tank. I went into full fright mode. This little bastard might actually beat me.

In the end, I made it. Barely. In what amounted to a 70-meter sprint, I beat him by maybe half a meter? That was me organization at full speed, no mercy.

I looked at my own son in disbelief. How did this happen? He’s just a kid. A 9-year-old kid who almost beat me in a foot race. What the hell been to me? Was he getting much faster or was I sketch slower? It had to be a combination of both.

That’s when I observed down and noticed: He wasn’t wearing any shoes. He’d been organization in his bare feet the whole time. My son had almost defeated me in a race deprived of any shoes on. 

What would have happened if he’d put his organization shoes back on? I don’t know. I don’t wanna know.

Mortality 

On some peaceful I knew this was inevitable. I knew my son would get faster as I got slower. That the lines plotted on this graph would one day spoiled over, but this race — this infernal race — was sketch at twin blind spots in my parental psyche. 

First, the refusal to accept the ravages of age. There’s a difference between gleaming your body is slowly decaying and truly understanding it. It’s the reason punch-drunk boxers come out of retirement for “one last fight.” In our minds we’re always at the peak of our abilities. In our absolute prime. 

Part two of this paradox: It’s almost impossible to really expected our children growing up, getting older in the same way everyone gets older. In my mind I’m still the same teenager, galloping past everyone at speedy. My son, too, is frozen in my imagination. He’ll always be my baby boy, the 6-year-old spending entire weekends teaching himself to backflip on a trampoline.

Everyone is sketch older all of the time. This race is a bodily manifestation of that grand truth. Yesterday I was rocking my son to sleep in the dead of night, today he almost beat me in a 70-meter jog. Children are a living, breathing reminder of the passage of time. And our own mortality.

But now, my inevitable defeat feels even more inevitable. I concept I had another couple of years. I probably have a pair of months. Tops. 

Now my thoughts are focused on what I’ll do when he wins.

I have to give him the cash, right? That seems clear. But do I give him $100 spending cash and put the last $900 in some sort of fund he’ll receive when he turns 16? That was my apt instinct, but it feels lame. Too much of a “dad move.”

My additional instinct says “just give him the money.” Flat out give him every cent. Let him stuff $1,000 into his tiny dinosaur wallet and let the chips fall where they may. Whether he grants it to charity or blows it on Minecraft skins — it’ll be his pick. Maybe this will be a story he tells his own kids, new one of those “teaching moments.”

Because ultimately all I want is for my son — my wild, fleet little son — to learn to live with the consequences of his own choices. 

Just like his dear old dad.