I got a little distracted now and skipped the preschool years. I don’t remember much from that time, except for some stories that somehow remained in my memory.

So, let me tell this in order.

I’ll tell you right away that I might be wrong about the timeline, but you can’t catch me in a lie.

Only my parents can do that.

According to my parents, I had an obsession with technology from my early childhood, but then I was breaking everything I could break.

I especially liked to take apart an old record-player or the radio set that my dad used to secretly leave in my bed so I wouldn’t disturb him working at home.

I’d sit in bed for hours, sniffling and tinkering with the appliance until I took it apart. The interesting thing is, I have no idea now how I did it. Then my dad would take it away from me, assembly it back to the pristine state, leave it on my bed, and everything would repeat again.

Later they started buying toys that matched my age, and I began to take them apart, but unfortunately, my parents were not able to put them back together.

One of my favorite activities at the time was riding a motorcycle.

Dad wasn’t quite that excited and didn’t support me in my addiction because, unfortunately, he played the role of a motorcycle himself.

For me, it looked simple enough.

I asked my dad to lie on his back (and not necessarily on the bed, it could have been on the floor), his stomach was my saddle, his hands were the exhaust pipes. The thing I liked the most was starting the engine, so it kept dying down.

Unfortunately for my dad, I imagined the starter being on his side ribs.

Yeah, I forgot, I had to turn on the ignition beforehand, you’ll never guess, but it was dad’s nose.

My extreme motorcycle racing looked like this: I’d put dad lying in a motorcycle position, straddle on top of him on his stomach, twisted his nose, and (that was the culmination) I’d get up a little bit and kicked with my heel on his ribs and try to “start him up”.

Around the fifth attempt (sometimes there were more attempts, but never less, as I enjoyed with this process), I still started the motorcycle.

Next, there were two ways to continue.

The first scenario was that it died down at once and everything was happening again, and the second scenario was that I rode it, but not for long.

And it could not be called just “riding”, it was a crazy race on a very, very rough road. It was really tense for Dad because I was actually hopping on his stomach.

Unexpectedly, not for me, but for dad, it stopped, the engine was dead. But there was no relief for him. Everything started over. I loved riding.

That’s how I had fun. Dad, being a wise man and having thought that any technology would wear out quickly with such ruthless exploitation, decided to find a replacement.

One day dad bought me a kids’ pedal car. I all but lived in it and even used to fell asleep behind the wheel. It was from that time on that I fell in love with car racing and I still love it.

I even wanted to become a driver when I was a kid, and when I was a little bit older, I wanted to become a car tester and work at AvtoVAZ. Thank God, not all childhood dreams come true.

In general, the situation with gifts from my father was very interesting. Well, how interesting, he was very serious and the exact opposite of grandmother. Dad never spoiled me and did not give me any toys. And he was proud of it, and he always telling me things like: “I’ve only given you two gifts in your whole life that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.” That’s basically what happened.

He gave me two cars over the years: one kids’ pedal car and one real car.

Really, there was another toy that my dad brought home unexpectedly and took away just as quickly. It was a radio-controlled moon rover, the Lunokhod. It was something out of science fiction at the time. But only now, becoming a father in my turn, I realize that moon rover was a toy not for me, but for dad himself. All men are big kids who want to play with toys that weren’t there when we were little. Daddy, having played a little and realizing that these are not the times for such expensive toys, returned the toy moon rover to where it came from.

Adult reason took over childish dreams and emotions.

Truth be told, I sometimes actually find myself trying to trick my son into choosing a toy I like the most, to have a little play with it as well.

I’m lucky my son and I have the same interests, and he likes cars too. That passion for cars hasn’t gone away so far.

I started driving very early on my life. At first, sitting on my dad’s lap, all I did was steering the wheel and changing gears. Then, when my legs became long enough to reach the foot pedals, I was already pushing the accelerator, and a little later, I was actually driving the car.