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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.

Driving was a reward for my good work, and it was usually on country road where we drove to plant bakhcha gardens (places for growing watermelons and sweet melons). Despite the fact that the garden work took several hours and the trip behind the wheel lasted 5-10 minutes top, I was still looking forward to the trip.

The first hours of training were very hard for me, and I got out of the wheel sweating and wet like a drowned rat because of stress. There were moments when I was ready to give up and get out of the steering wheel, but my dad, as a professional teacher, was pushing me into continuing the ride. He took a big risk, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him to teach me, because we had a lot of moments when I could crash the car. To make it clear how he felt about the car, I’m going to tell another anecdote from those years.

A car used to be not a necessity but a luxury those times. We lived it a district called simply “116 km”, and this is such a small, as if separate, part of the city, where everyone knows each other. And everybody knew dad very well, because he was the school principal at that time.

And then one day, coming out into the yard, dad noticed some boys circling around our car and licking it. Dad got confused and came up to the boys, and asked them what they were doing. What they told him was that they often hear from their parents that the principal licks his car into shape, and they wanted to know how it is and what it tastes like.

He cared about it a lot: washed it, waxed it, in winter we put it on bricks in the garage so the springs wouldn’t deform.

In the evenings, we used to go to the garage with him, get in the car and smell it. We really liked the way her plastic smelled.

Can you imagine what dad felt when he saw his treasure heading into some roadside post?

After many years, I felt it all on me, teaching my wife and son how to drive.

So much worrying, screaming, tears…

In spite of my cherubic appearance, I was no angel, and my weakest point was my behavior, or rather, being bad.

I don’t use the word “hooliganism” because it feels too harsh for that young age.

Now, remembering things I can still remember, I wonder and ask myself a question: how did I do it and how was I even capable of it back then, being so young?

It’s even a bit scary to tell.

I messed around a lot, some antics were forgotten for good and ended without much destruction, but there were those who left a mark on my body for a long time, and some – for life.

One day, I was fooling with a pillow on my bed again, as many times before, trying to hit the head of either of my parents,