“Life Is A Highway” Or “Life Finds A Way”: Am I Cooler Than My Son?

R cruised into our yard on his gleaming, orange Strider bike on a sunny day in SoCal. I jogged in behind him, shutting the white gate and wiping a bead of sweat from my temple. He settled onto a familiar patch of grass near the porch.

“Daddy, will you please play ‘Life Is A Highway?'”

<Sigh> “Sure buddy.”

Whenever we get home from a bike ride, R wants to ride in circles around our tiny lawn while I blast “Life Is A Highway” by Rascal Flatts. In fact, whenever R is feeling down, or happy, or tired, or excited, or any other emotion under the sun, he wants to hear “Life Is A Highway.” I hung my head as I searched for it on YouTube. It didn’t take long, because it was my last video viewed. I hit play and pointed my phone in R’s direction as he stood poised over his handlebars, like a racer toeing the line at the Tour De France. I, the human boombox, closed my eyes. The far too familiar opening guitar riff blasted from my outstretched hand. R hurtled himself forward across the grass. “I’m psyched!!!!” he yelled.

And, once again, I had to listen to that song.

“Through all these cities and all these towns, It’s in my blood, and it’s all around”

“Life Is A Highway” is R’s favorite song. It’s not mine. In fact, a few years’ ago, Beast Wife and I were offered free tickets to see Rascal Flatts in concert. Free! We said no. Rascal Flatts is very popular, and I’m sure it would’ve been fun (though not as fun as that White Claw-soaked Dierks concert a few weeks later). It’s just that, whenever I hear them on my Pandora station, I reach for the thumbs-down button. Every time. And every day since the movie “Cars” came into R’s life, Rascal Flatts entered mine. I sang all of my favorite country songs to R when he was a baby, hoping one would stick. Now, R’s favorite song is a country song. But it’s “Life Is A Highway.” And I have to hear it every day, morning and night. It’s in my blood and it’s all around.

I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t be caught dead yelling “I’m psyched!” when a Rascal Flatts song comes on. But I smiled as R shredded Strider bike donuts on our lawn. His world was small and simple; a winding, glorious, 20 foot highway. His joy filled our yard and even cracked his dad’s staid gaze. I hoped my eye rolls and poor body language didn’t ruin it for him. I mean, who was I to judge a 3-year-old’s taste in music? Bah humbug, old man, let the kid ride.

Later that month, I loaded R into the van after preschool. As I buckled him in, he said, “Daddy, today I sang ‘Life Is a Highway’ and ‘J’ said, ‘No, not agaaaain!'”

My heart sank. J is one of his best friends. And in three words, he made clear what I’d insinuated for weeks: that song is lame (or at least overplayed). I was mad. Nobody was going to tell my son what music he’s supposed to like! He should be free to be his own, unique self, Rascal Flatts and all! But then I remembered all my eye rolls, the hanging head, the staring off into space, all quiet ways of saying “Not again.” On our drive home, I queued up “Life Is A Highway” on Spotify and blasted the neighborhood with it. But perhaps the damage was already done.

“Life… Finds A Way”

Shaken, I decided to give “Life Is A Highway” another chance. If R was getting criticized for his favorite song in class, maybe I could dig up some unknown, redeeming qualities he could use to defend himself. I did my research and learned that the Rascal Flatts version I’d grown to loathe was not the original! Tom Cochrane, a Canadian country artist, wrote and recorded the song in 1991 after a trip to Africa with World Vision. Cochrane’s original actually landed higher on the Billboard Hot 100 than Rascal Flatts’ ever did. His awesome, creepy music video alone made my research worth it. I wondered where the deserty, Western scenes from the video were filmed. I kept digging until, awestruck, I found the location: Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.

I’ve been there.

Actually, R has too (in utero). When Beast Wife was pregnant, we took a “babymoon” to Banff National Park in Alberta. For one glorious week we absorbed stunning landscapes, hiked to glaciers, and warmed our souls in alpine tea huts. But, with two nights remaining in our last kid-free vacation for decades, we left. We packed up our rental car and drove four hours east toward Drumheller, leaving the glaciers behind in favor of the Canadian badlands. A storm was brewing in the north, sending frigid October winds to greet us as we scurried into the Heritage Inn & Suites in the city of Brooks. I grabbed a few pamphlets from the front desk so I could study them under the hospital-like lights in our second floor room. Beast Wife rolled her eyes. We left one of the most spectacular wilderness locales in the world to huddle in a cheap hotel room in the middle of nowhere. Why? Because just outside of Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, in the same canyons where Tom Cochrane kicked up dust for his indelible, upbeat country anthem, stood Dinosaur Provincial Park. I wanted to see fossils.

Dinosaurs make me psyched. And Dinosaur Provincial Park promised a guided hike where you could see real dinosaur fossils still embedded in the rocks! I imagined the dig site from the early scenes in Jurassic Park. But instead of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, it was me and pregnant Beast Wife. To me, this was well worth the detour. When Jurassic Park first hit theaters in 1993, I was too young to see it. But I read the book, and I snapped up every magazine, toy, and trinket related to “JP” that I could. By the time I actually saw the movie, I knew every scene and plot twist. I could recite the lines, a superpower I continue to exercise to this day, to Beast Wife’s continued eye rolls. And on that day in Alberta, I was that 10-year-old, make-believe paleontologist again. Shivering, we joined a trail of nerdy tourists and leaned into the freezing, howling winds. It was so cold, some in our party turned back early, thinking we may never reach the fossils before freezing to death. But as my favorite character, Ian Malcolm, said, “Life…. finds a way.” And we found our way to the fossils. And I was so happy.

Since then, R has celebrated three birthdays. Two of them just so happened to share a theme….

R’s 2nd and 3rd birthday decorations, respectively. I was psyched! And I think he had a good time too….

To his credit, he put on a happy face for those birthdays. Even for his 3rd birthday, when he probably had the cognitive abilities to prefer a “Cars” theme, he didn’t protest the dinosaurs in the living room. He didn’t call me lame. He didn’t say “No, not agaiiiin,” or roll his eyes. I thought about my Jurassic Park obsession as I watched the “Life Is A Highway” videos a few more times. Yeah, the song is lame. But do you know what else is lame? Dragging your pregnant wife into the Canadian badlands to freeze while you pretend you’re a fictional paleontologist. Lame is in the eye of the beholder, who is usually cool. Going even further, not only is “lame” subjective, but it’s also hurtful and unhealthy! In “Daring Greatly,” Brene Brown writes about how cynicism and cool, sometimes manifested by calling something “lame,” are shields and weapons we use to distance ourselves from being vulnerable and to injure those who threaten us by their brave display of vulnerability. She writes:

Among some folks it’s almost as if enthusiasm and engagement have become a sign of gullibility. Being too excited or invested makes you lame. A word we’ve banned in our house along with loser and stupid.

Brene Brown, “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead” (Reprint ed., Avery, 2015), pp. 167-168.

So I suppose “lame” will now join “shy” on my household’s growing list of naughty words. I’ve learned to shield my vulnerability as well as anybody out there. I’ve been lame and uncool much more often than the alternative. And now here I was being too cool for “Life Is A Highway,” a positive, joyful song about coming together and facing life’s adversity head-on. Instead, I chose to follow the mantra of the cynical, wise-cracking, chaos-loving Ian Malcolm: “Life… Finds A Way.” In comparison, Malcolm’s famous line sounds more aloof than hopeful. Being cool is more comfortable. I should know. I spent many uncomfortable, lame, uncool years building up an icy-cool, “strong, silent-type” shield. I haven’t finished Brown’s book yet, but I’ve read enough to know that I should be modeling something a little different for my impressionable, wonderfully uncool son.

“If you’re going my way, I want to drive it all night long”

I told R that he had one more trip around the yard before we headed back inside for the day. He asked me to play “Life Is A Highway” one last time, and I obliged. He bolted out of the gates on his Strider bike again, but this time he was a little too psyched. He careened out of control. His front tire hit the edge of a wooden planter, and he flew over the handlebars into a waiting bush. I covered my mouth, chuckling, as I walked over to free him from the branches. He was suspended upside down, Rascal Flatts still blasting from my pocket. “Buddy, you are not the picture of cool right now,” I thought.

Being uncool is something Brene Brown talks about as well. And I’ve decided I want to be as uncool as my 3-year-old. Our relative coolness started to converge during a recent trip to Mammoth Lakes. We went skiing, and 3-year-old R crushed it. I followed him and Instructor Beast Wife down the slopes, grateful that I had a toddler to blame for the half-day on the bunny slopes that I needed to practice my turns. R hit the slopes with minimal fear in an outfit authorized by uncool parents living vicariously through their cool-looking kid. I wore my 15-year-old poop-brown jacket with bulging, sagging pockets, basically the cargo shorts of ski gear. Strangers in the lodge cooed at R as he strutted around in his ski boots and probably wondered whether they should notify the authorities about the frumpy dude in the dad-jacket following him a little too closely. He looked awesome, but I was still worried about him. I badly wanted him to succeed at skiing, to embody his gnarly look on the slopes, and to build some precious confidence.

Beast Wife did the heavy lifting during his ski lessons while I trailed behind to snap pictures and catch some videos. But maybe I was doing my part too in my embarrassing brown jacket and awkward, Jerry turns. On one of my runs on the bunny slopes, I gave myself permission to be uncool on my skis. I leaned in to my frumpy, brown jacket. I tapped into that 10-year-old, Jurassic Park-loving kid that still emerges whenever Jurassic Park happens to appear on TNT on Saturday afternoon. And suddenly, when I started caring less about how cool I looked, I got better at skiing. Similarly, I heard R singing during one of his runs. “Life is a hiiiiggghhwaayy, I’m gonna riiiiide it alllllll niiiggght looooong. Doo, doo, DOOOO!” Happy, free, and uncool (despite his parents’ best efforts), he was getting better at skiing too.

Here’s hoping that for my sake, and for my sons’ sake, I can have the courage to keep driving that uncool highway. All night long.