I Tried To Bond With My Young Son Over Transformers And Failed Miserably

Six year old children are primed with the ability to fixate upon and form obsessions about anything.

Many children choose as their fixation the Transformers, the subject of a documentary series first broadcast in the United States in 1984. These underrated documentaries tell the story — in an effective, moving fashion not unlike the documentaries of acclaimed director Ken Burns— of an epic battle between heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons as they crash-land on Earth.

Insatiable as children are for knowledge, I found myself in the unenviable position of being required to name and describe more Transformers than I was able to recollect from my own childhood history classes.

More horrifyingly, this request was made at a time when I was unable to access Wikipedia, an encyclopaedia containing the most complete historical record of the Transformers.

I am not proud of what I did next.

To be clear, my intentions were noble. I wanted to bond with my son, just as the heroic Autobots formed a powerful bond with Spike Witwicky.

So, in a moment of weakness, I lied to my son.

Instead of regaling him with true tales of Autobot honor, sacrifice and heroism, instead of warning him of the devious, evil Decepticons, I invented, out of whole cloth, a series of fake Transformers drawn from the experiences of my own life.