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Generation Gap

Richard K. Williams

    It was year three of what I was believing was my never-ending divorce proceedings. I was still not allowed overnight visitation with my six-year-old son, but at least we had worked past supervised visitation. She had a better lawyer, mine gave in too easily, plus, hell hath no fury and all that. Anyway, I was looking forward to this coming Saturdays visit. I was at the store to pick up some snacks and stuff for lunch when at the end of an isle I spotted a kiosk containing a stack of VHS video tapes for sale. They were old movies and TV shows long out of circulation. Out of curiosity I took a cursory perusal of the titles and among the stacks was a tape of a Japanese cartoon show I was fascinated with as a child; Giagantor the Space Age Robot. I loved those early imported cartoon shows like Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and of course Giagantor. I watched those shows when I was about the age my son is now. He is a huge fan of the Transformers cartoon show, he also has a lot of the Transformers toys. Whenever we spent time together he is always excitedly telling me about the latest episodes or showing me his latest transformer figure, and what it turns into. So, thinking this could be a great father son bonding experience for us to watch a video of the robot cartoon I was fascinated with when I was a kid. Also to watch it with my son who is obsessed with robots. I must admit though that the robots my son was accustomed to that can transform into cars, jets, trucks, and even dinosaurs, to him a giant gladiator looking, pointy nosed, rocket backed, robot that had to be controlled by a kid with a joystick remote control, might not be viewed with the same enthusiasm as when I was a child. But I still held onto the bonding opportunity along with the opportunity to show him what I liked as a kid. So, I bought the tape. The tape contained four episodes of the black and white cartoon show, which added up to about an hour of screen time. I got a little excited thinking about how my son would react to watching this antiquated bit of animation.
     I picked my son up at his mothers apartment on Saturday morning and drove him to his favorite park, to play on the equipment there and have him use up some of that youthful energy he possessed in abundance. We played on the swings and jungle gym, buried trucks and cars in the play sand area. As it neared lunch time I took my son back to the car and we headed to my apartment. When we got inside, I made him lunch and after he finished eating I asked him if he wanted to watch an old TV show with a robot in it that I used to watch when I was his age. He smiled at me and said. “Sure dad, lets watch it together.” I sat him down in front of the TV and I loaded the tape in the VCR and pressed play. For the four episodes we watched Jimmy Sparks control Giagantor using his rocket powered flying ability and great strength to battle evil. As I was watching I thought to myself that this is really pretty lame the art is crude, the story line ridiculous, but, as a kid in 1964 this was hot stuff. My son never said a word the entire time we watched the cartoons. When it was over and I was removing the tape from the VCR I asked him. “So, son, what did you think?” He looked at me with the honesty and innocence in his eyes that only a child can have and said. “Megatron would kick his ass!”

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