Recently, a female family member, who, for the sake of this segment will remain unnamed, had expressed to me her hurt feelings over some things that had happened a few years in hindsight.
During that conversation, this family member had taken the time to communicate to me and one other, that her feelings had been hurt, first, by yours truly, second, by the rest of the family who had taken that piece of data and made a laughing stock out of it. The event in question was one that had happened somewhere between 2009-10, but as for the conversation in question...that took place just a few days before the blog that you are reading was published.
First, what I took from that conversation is the same data, the same overall idea that Aaron Baker, Elliott Hulse and others had been trying to tell me for nearly 3 years: everyone is fragile, and everyone is easy to break. As for "Sal," he is not above that, "Aaron Baker" and "Elliott Hulse" are easy to break as well.
Here's what I learned from Aaron Baker, Gary Custer and others: If you're going to get involved with, motorsports, for example, then it's going to be easy for every single person to cry like a little bitch; this morning, before I wrote this blog, I myself, who wants so much to be "the Fonz," sat in the corner and cried like a little bitch. That's embarrassing, but hey...it happens!
I cried like a little bitch because that's pretty much how I feel every morning that I wake up. But you know something? It really is a blessing in disguise to feel that way sometimes, because when you're in that much of a rut, that's when you start to write blogs like this one.
Whenever you're involved with motorsports on a non-professional level, there's not too much research 'n development involved, or "RND." Right now, as I am writing this in June of 2015, my sister is taking care of my baby nephew, who will be turning 3 next month. As a first-time uncle, I have to do a little time-traveling and think for the future.
There will be a time when little Gionni will not be so little, and that's when he'll learn how to drive. For me, it's not necessary to pull out a stats sheet just to get together and build a street car with my nephew. But once that kid gets enrolled into "karting academy" and gets ready to suit-up, no matter how he may bitch-and-cry, that kid's going to have to learn the concepts of timing, and how it's important to check score sheets once you're done.
And even for me and Aaron, grown men with or without physical challenges, these same general principles apply. What seems to be the problem is the mentality, the mindset...but that's why we have numbers and outputs, because at the end of the day, numbers really do tell all. Aaron looks like he's going pretty fast whenever I go with him and CORE to MB2 Raceway. But what impresses me, his fiancee or anyone else are the numbers that show-up on the timesheets.
My scores, my lap times are so weak in comparison to Aaron's; at MB2's, I'm currently down to a 31.5-second lap time, where Aaron is in the 19s or whatever. If you look at some of MB2's most competitive racers, they are literally running at about 50 miles per hour, with 18-20 second lap times.
But here's the thing: my uncle is a good bodyman, my dad has done it professionally since 1980...but I know a lot more about Ultimas and McLarens than do my dad or uncle, but the both of them can smoke me on paint-and-body, while I'm still the fastest kart racer and Aaron Baker is the most bad-ass dirt biker. But that goes back to last year's conversation with the guy from GNC about fitness: you really can't have it all!
It was the guy who was selling me my protein snacks from GNC who told me one day, "Bro, I spent some of my life trying to get fit, but now because making money is my goal, I don't have time for the gym!" That same language can be translated to the karting scene at MB2's. Aaron had told me one day in his office at CORE, after I had asked him about bike racing at Kamikaze, "You know what it is, bro; you're a 'drag racer!'"
I didn't really know what Aaron had meant by that, but I figured it out pretty quick once I got into karts. Again, you look at Aaron Baker, you look at Sam Schmidt: these guys are better in road-racing than myself, Italian-American who has the "Grand National" logo tattooed on his left arm.
But that's because I'm a drag-racer; what do I know about going fast through corners? But then you take Neftali Valdez, who is my in-home provider. Dude only runs 27-28 second laps, and he's able-bodied! So what's his excuse?
That's why when opening this blog, which is really one about MB2's and go karts, I used my own family as an analogy. Because that family member had really had their feelings hurt, and this was a person who, for years, I had visualized as being unbreakable, the same way I had viewed able-bodied friends and family my whole life.
Truthfully, I liked being a jerk growing up; since I was disabled, I thought it was okay to mistreat other family members because they weren't. The way I always visualized my own parents, my sister who is my only sibling, is that they are bigger and better than me anyways, so why bother to consider theirs or anyone's feelings? After all, they can take the abuse, where guys like me and Nick Sapon are not able.
One thing Sapon and I had in common, growing-up, is that we would have done anything to break our mothers' hearts; who were they to practice "witchcraft," while guys like me and Nick couldn't get ahead?!
But this is what you learn from go-karting, and from automotive in general, even across genres: Not everyone can have the same abilities, and not everyone can yield the same results. My father, the owner of Westside Collision in Lancaster, California, could probably get along with Aaron Baker, Gary Custer...pretty much anyone in that circle about off-road and karting. But I can talk about turbo Buicks for 8 hours, write a volume on them....while my brother-in-law is an ace mechanic when it comes to everything VTec.
I wasn't expecting that, but I think this may be why it was/is so important for me to be a part of MB2 and CORE, because both of these experiences made me realize that every person on earth will get hurt sometime, but that's even more the reason why you can't be rough with others, even if you are disabled. Don't think that your friends and family are bigger then you are, because when we go back to that conversation about laps at MB2 Raceway, what did we say about numbers and statistics? We established that those are the data entries that tell all, and about everyone.
On the day that my grandmother died in January of 2009, she didn't take the "Park Avenue" or the Lexus with her. In fact, by the time the woman was sick, she couldn't speak for herself on a lot of things. But God bless her, on the day of her funeral, she had "Bicycle World" and the Catholic saints blasted all over her casket.
She went into the ground with a poem written by her grandson, yours truly. What that tells me is that Grandma was a woman who had a lot of things to be grateful for. Business, friends...for all the money that my grandfather made, his fanbase just didn't quite equal grandma's!
But this is my fault too, because I'm not the nicest guy in the world, and Grandma was the one who taught me to be a nice guy. She would set Grandpa straight on any day, and that's because she was real! But then I guessed the reason that she liked me is because I liked keeping it real. I don't think she would've liked me very much, however, if I would've went around trying to be someone who I'm not.
So again, getting involved with MB2 Raceway taught me that that's what life really is; opportunity is not for everyone, and not everyone can do the exact same thing. Grandma baked cream puffs and blackberry tarts; around the same time, me and mom were playing Super Nintendo. Grandma used to buy me my video games, but mom knew how to play 'em! Dad knew how to pull a dent out of our family's Taurus, but Grandpa cooked the most gourmet clam sauce anyone in the San Fernando Valley had ever tasted.
That doesn't qualify one over the other; it's just that my dad worked on cars, and Grandpa was a chef. My dad's LS Nova is one of the best compact muscle cars I've ever seen, but his old A-Body had better interior features. I mean, you can't hook-up with a girl who looks good and cooks; it's a balancing act.
My hope with karting at MB2's is that it will help me to reinforce that very thought pattern. First, I couldn't drive without smashing into a wall, then I started driving, but slowly. Currently, I have a 31.5-second lap time; when I first started, it was closer to a minute.
Power of the human will? Could be, but if karting has taught me anything, it's that the real disability is mental. But there's another thing I've learned that I hope to take with me to my grave: You really want to hurt someone else's feelings, take them out on a race track and tap the brake pedal halfway through a straightaway; nothing says "cold vengeance" like tail lights in a drag race. You may not learn everything in high school auto, but that's one lesson about motoring that sure is served to you, by the time you're a teenager, on a silver plate.
Guys with fast cars like to talk; let's get some score sheets, and if you're going to play with another person's emotions, do it with stats, not blows...
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