Who needs a balanced breakfast when I can open my newspaper e-mail inboxes in the morning and find a nicely balanced amount of mail filled with both kudos and venom?
Last week's column managed to produce a good, healthy chunk of both.
In case you missed it, the column was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek life lesson for my teenage sons so they would be aware that life would probably throw them a curve or two before they might be able to consider buying their dream Bugatti, Corvette or McLaren.
It was obviously a mistake on my part to forget that the dream of driving a fantasy machine lies deep-seated in the souls of a great many human beings. Based on the responses I received from some readers, my comments were the literary equivalent of digging my fingernails into their hearts, ripping out their dreams and proceeding to do the Macarena on them.
I was fascinated and entertained by all the comments I received, both pro and con:
"Thank you for your article. It was nicely written, to the point, and so true. I will use it as a discussion aid with my 14-year-old daughter." - Mario C. De Jesus
"Because I believe in fate, it is your son's destiny to be at least a multimillionaire if not billionaire, and I hope he buys every car he has ever thought was cool, buys his brothers whatever car they want, buys his friends whatever car they want, and puts you in a two-bit nursing home." - Wes Lawson
"My sons are only 6 and 10, but I'm cutting out your column and plan on saving it for a few years until they are teenagers. You hit the nail right on the head with that one." - Carl Jespers
"After reading your column, I was left with a renewed appreciation of my parents, who never bothered to try to crush my dreams and told me that if I wanted something, I'd have to work and plan." - David Smith
"I try to talk to my kids like that, and all I can come up with is, `Get real!' I like your satirical wit so much better. I plan on borrowing your speech and using it as my own when the time is right." - Vanessa Orlani
"Please, do not kill a young boy's dreams, no matter how impractical or outlandish. Understand your son. Talk to him. Ask him about the technical details of the car, how many were built, why it was built, how fast it can go. You might be surprised to find that your son is an intelligent being and his interest in something like exotic cars could be the key to his inner world.
"Then again, he might become a juvenile delinquent street racer and get arrested for illegal street racing when he's 16." - Darren Hereford
Michelle Groh-Gordy is the owner of InterActive! Traffic School Online at www.trafficinteractive.com , and writes a syndicated weekly column on driving for the publications of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
