The Most Important Lesson a Man Should Teach His Son

A parenting photoseries by G-FUNK

I’d like to think that I’m doing a decent job or raising Funk, Jr. We have fun, he laughs plenty and is pretty healthy. He likes helping out around the house and has a curious mind. But during a geekcentric conversation earlier this week concerning the classic movie Jurassic Park a shocking realisation dawned on me. It wasn’t that Funk, Jr. needed a stronger respect for nature, an in-depth knowledge of history or a general mistrust of computer programmers – it was that he doesn’t know that he has to fear velociraptors.

Rest assured, I know that many of you just scoffed at that. Yes, I am well aware that there are no velociraptors around right now but if science fiction has taught us anything it’s that one day a greedy capitalist will clone dinosaurs for an amusement park and nature will find a way for them to breed and escape the island and reach the mainland. And on that day they will be among us, and we won’t be ready for them. Because they’re smart. We’ll set up a line and they’ll flank us. We need to be able to expect them at any time and we need to be afraid.

In order to ensure my legacy I vowed to prepare my son for the day the raptors come. So I bought this:

We named him ‘Vicious’. Vicious the Velociraptor. His role in the house was to teach Funk, Jr. to respect nature’s greatest monster. This didn’t go as planned, however, as all his growling and menacing produced nothing more than gleeful chuckles from the little lad. He only saw it as a toy and not the deadly killer it represented! Not even when he caused carnage at the felt farm!

So a new angle was taken. It’s not that the dinosaur is dangerous – lots of thing about the house are – but that he can strike at any moment! The next day was spent with Vicious partaking in various ambushes around the playroom:

As the day went on Funk, Jr. happened upon Vicious the Velociraptor a number of times, each time delighted to find him. Suddenly I noticed a change in the dynamic – this was no longer a deadly dino trying to catch a young child unawares. It was a game. They were both…having fun…

It was then I knew that it was I to learn a lesson that day. We shouldn’t be teaching our children to hate and fear those that we don’t understand. We need to introduce them to each other without any preconceptions and let them work things out themselves. My intention was to create a respectful rivalry – instead they created a friendship.

This feature was made possible with the assistance of Vicious the Velociraptor and Funk, Jr. – the most awesome geekling ever!