The Dream Moves On

Gavin has been drawing up Go-Cart designs for the past month. He and his buddy have it all worked out and they got started last week. Here's what they have done so far.

Step 1: Show your mother the drawings so she will smile and think you are a cute and silly kid, but not really expect anything to come of that nice sketch of a go-cart.

Step 2: Wait a few weeks until mom has almost forgotten about the go-cart plan and call her from a strange friend's cell phone to let her know you are not coming home from school. You have very important business to attend to at Ole' Widower Honey's house (okay, his name is just Brother Honey), but he's expecting them to arrive for their scheduled time.



Step 3: Make an appointment to go back to Honey's house and go through his collection of old metal junk in his shop out back. At the same time, have your other friends contacting their father who owns a mechanic shop and see if you can spend some time down there before the week is out.

Step 4: After you have found the perfect project for scrap metal, realize that you don't want to hurt Bro. Honey's feelings and instead of scrapping the old motor bike you found in his garage, you decide to "practice" on this one before you get into the actual building of the go-carts.



Step 5: First try to talk your father into letting you store the soon-to-be-fabulous-addition-to-the-garage-toys in your back yard. That will fail miserably. Try tactic two: Call your friend who has nothing to do with this plan. Invite him to join the team of mechanics and share the glory of triumph when it runs and moves at the same time. Oh, and if he says he's interested be sure to have him store the junk at his house.



Step 6: Go pick up Yamaha and bring back to the garage. You know your dad has tools you can use. Once it's cleaned up, you can move it the newest member's house.

Step 7: The bike must be cleaned. You'll need four shirts of various sizes out of Gavin's closet to cover your good clothes with his good clothes. He doesn't mind sharing, he knows his mom would never care about grease on good shirts. She's real good and turning things into rags!



Step 8: Tell your sister you'd like her to make some lemonade for the gang. They're getting pretty thirsty with all this work.

Step 9: Gather the tools and start scraping decades of dirt from the frame of the bike. Be sure to use mom's butter knives on the real hard to get grunge. And go ahead with using her favorite food container (you know, the one that gets used whenever there's a meal to be brought to someone else or a treat brought to a function) as a bucket for greasy, grimy, used to be white rags.



Step 10: Be proud. You are on your way to freedom from oppression and on a journey to independence. This project is the gateway between boyhood and manliness. And hopefully as a man, you won't think your mother's butter knife will be your best tool option next time!