Volume 5, Issue 39: Where's Johnny?

"That's not completely true, I got other sorrows."

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Athens, like much of the Southeast, was hit hard by Hurricane Helene this last week. My 10-year-old son Wynn could not have been more pleased.

Two months ago now, Wynn went with me to see Twisters, the reboot of the 1996 movie about tornadoes. This was not unusual: When their dad hosts a movie podcast, the kids in this house are going to be regularly dragged to movies whether they want to go or not. (They’re still mad at me about Eternals.) But what I did not anticipate was that Wynn, because of this movie, would become obsessed with tornadoes, hurricanes, storms, weather patterns, heck, just basic everyday clouds. He has since watched every episode of “Storm Chasers”—a show that went off the air before he was born—an endless series of documentaries about “weather disasters” and all sorts of old YouTube newscasts of Hurricane Sandy or the Joplin tornado. A while back, I came home from picking up his brother from cross country practice and found him on the front porch, iPad in hand, staring at the clouds. “Conditions are ripe for the creation of a supercell, Dad,” he said, his eyes lit up. He showed me a radar map on the iPad. “Look at that cluster, it’s amazing.”

As Helene approached, he constantly had The Weather Channel app open and was informing us of wind patterns and cloud formations. He was insistent—to the point that he was yelling at the weatherman on television—that Atlanta would end up more in the path of the storm than they were predicting. (And he was right.) When he learned that they canceled school here in Athens on Friday because of the storm, he cheered; he’d now get to stay up late and monitor Helene properly. “I don’t think we’re going to get a tornado here,” he told me, with a hint of sadness. “The next time you go to Illinois, can I go with you? They have a lot more tornadoes there. They had an EF4 there once.” He then went on to inform me of every city that had suffered an EF4 tornado over the last 20 years. “A lot of times people think they have an EF4, but it’s just an EF3, because you can’t have an EF4 without …” you know, he went on for a while on that one, and I did my best to keep up but I’ll confess it was all way over my head.

One of the more overwhelming aspects of being a parent is knowing that the events of any current day—a day like any other day for an adult but potentially a profound pivot point for a developing and curious mind—carry stakes that could butterfly-effect their way into changing their child’s life forever. Adult life doesn’t usually have a lot of needle-drop moments; our cakes are mostly baked. But kids, who are exposed to something they’ve never seen before on a daily basis, can have their minds blown out of nowhere. After all, we all once had these moments ourselves. The first time I saw a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium, it was very obvious I’d be following that team, and trying to recapture that experience, for decades to come. When I went to see the movie JFK in high school, I was so caught up in the film that it took me several hours to readjust to the real world outside the theater; that feeling of existing outside my mind and body is a dragon I’ve been chasing ever since. You don’t know what’s going to spark a kid’s mind. But you sure can’t put that fire out once it’s sparked.

Wynn has always had a science nerd’s brain; the weather stuff is just the next logical extension. He’s obsessed with the YouTuber Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who makes fun, watchable videos conducting scientific experiments with real world application. I’ve been quoting the one I watched about chlorine in swimming pools for months since I saw it. (Basically, if a pool has a chlorine smell, it’s because someone has peed in it.) I also loved the obstacle course he put together to stop squirrels from eating his birdseed.

Rober has a subscription service called CrunchLabs in which kids get a monthly box where they build little contraptions and code cute robot maneuvers. I particularly enjoyed the trick water gun that fires back at the person shooting rather than what they’re shooting at; he got his brother on that one. Wynn will go in his room and work for several hours, and he’ll come out with a toy that he made himself. Two weeks ago, the HDMI port on the family Xbox broke, and Wynn and his grandfather spent nearly seven hours with a soldering iron trying to fix it. They had every piece of that thing in their hands at one point; I’m not sure either one of them had had more fun in weeks. I am baffled by all this; it is not something I inherently understand. But it is thrilling to see Wynn’s brain whir to life. He is young, and his life has an infinite number of turns left to take. But you can see certain things start to take shape. You can see a few paths he may already be on his way to taking.

And that’s the exciting, and unnerving, aspect of kids at this age: They have so much in front of them, but if they are passionate about something now, they’re already at the age that could make it the direction they end up going. I was already writing short stories at the age of 10, and putting together a weekly newspaper of sports scores called “The Will Street Journal.” I’ve always thought the best gift I was given was a clear understanding of what I cared about and what I wanted to do at a fairly young age: I knew I wanted to be a writer, really from middle school on, and thus made every decision from then on in pursuit of that goal. I wasn’t distracted by a myriad of interests or possibilities. My brain got sparked, and the fire never went out. Most people are not so fortunate. They don’t figure out what they want to do until later in life, if they ever do at all, and thus are in danger of floating into a field out of convenience or prudence and not discovering it’s not what they wanted out of their lives until it’s too late. I don’t really care what my kids do for a living, but I want them to want to do whatever they do: I want them to be driven by passion, not by what they think is somehow expected of them.

Which is why it’s thrilling to see Wynn already well on his way. Now, I’d rather him not be throwing himself into the path of dangerous weather events, and I do have to remind him that these tornadoes and hurricanes he gets so excited about have real-world effects and ramifications. (Or, put another way: You won’t be so excited if a storm causes a tree to fall on our house. And that trees are always falling on someone’s house.) But in those moments where you see him tracing a storm’s path, or constructing some sort of device, or coding a robot, or patiently trying to explain things I absolutely do not understand, you can see a creative, analytical mind coming into its own. You can see him come afire. And I can see, perhaps in a way that’s more than I am ready for, the outline of the person he will become—a person he will be soon, sooner than I think. He is a child now, learning who he shall be. But he is also already that person too. The seeds are all there. They’re already planted. He is well on his way. We’ll both look back someday at Twisters, and Helene, and “Storm Chasers,” and be able to track the path to the person he became. But he will not think of the adult he will grow into and the child he currently is as two different people. And he will be right. They’re the same guy. He already is that person. Now I just have to try to keep up. And know when the next rain is coming in.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. “Matlock,” Generation-X Icon, The Washington Post. Writing every two weeks for these folks now. Matlock! This was a fun one.

2. The Glory of These Terrible White Sox, New York. Losing builds character!

3. Your Bandwagon Postseason Teams, MLB.com. Who to cheer for if your team is out. (Like mine.)

4. My Review of “No Friday Night Lights,” Los Angeles Review of Books. My first book review for this fine publications.

5. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. This is the next-to-last all-30 power rankings of the season.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we reviewed “The Substance,” “His Three Daughters” and “In the Summers.”

Seeing Red, no show this week, two shows next week.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we preview the big Alabama game today.

Morning Lineup, I did Friday morning’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“There’s More to Know About the Tragic Murder of Emmett Till—A Lot More,” Wright Thompson, Esquire. I cannot say enough about Wright Thompson’s devastating new book The Barn, about the murder of Emmitt Till. Esquire excerpted it, but you should buy the book. Wright will be here in Athens on Tuesday. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“War?” System of a Down. This is maybe a little more intense than this newsletter playlist may be used to, but this song actually makes a rather pivotal appearance in the next book—which I am just about completed with edits on—so it’s on my brain this week. We will fight the heathens!

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

It has been nearly 30 years since, as I sat in the student section, my Illini came this close to beating the undefeated and dominant Penn State Nittany Lions at Memorial Stadium, the only time I ever had a chance to storm the field after a win.

Tonight: We get revenge! (OK, probably not. But it sure would be sweet if we did.)

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will