Let Your Kid Stay Home

About six months ago, Charlie Kirk (1993-2025) appeared as the very first guest of Gavin Newsom’s podcast, ‘This is Gavin Newsom’. Early on in the conversation, Gavin tells Kirk that his 13-year-old son is a big fan, and very badly wanted to meet him that morning, but Newsom insisted that he go to school instead, as it was a school day.

I really hope that, within the last six months, Gavin Newsom’s son was able to meet Charlie Kirk—because, if not, that’s an all-time unforgettable (maybe even irreparable) Dad fuck up: had he simply allowed his kid to stay home, then his kid would have been able to meet his hero while his hero was still alive.

Gavin Newsom, of course, never could have known that just a half a year later, Charlie Kirk would be assassinated. But, it’s not about that—it’s about knowing that one day of school doesn’t really matter, whereas the moment, of getting to stay home from school and meet the guy you love watching, means everything—and only comes once.

I remember going to a Yankee game with my dad when I was a kid. If I remember correctly, the tickets had been free. We didn’t even get anything to eat there (we brought food and drink, since we’re vegan). No money was spent other than the subway ride there.

As we were leaving, I remember looking at the gift shop with him. There was a dinky little fake-gold Derek Jeter baseball card that was $6 (I’ll always remember the cost of it). I remember asking him if he could get me it, and then him talking me out of it, and even gently making fun of me for wanting it, in a not-playful way: ‘Really? You want THAT?’. I said ‘No’, and we left.

On the subway ride home, I started crying. Not in a protest way, not in a ‘no fair!’ way, just tears of realization. I understood the moment fully and how wrong it was on so many levels. He didn’t know why I was crying, and I didn’t bother explaining. I just cried until I was done crying, and that was it.

I knew that I would never do anything like that to my kid, and while I don’t have a kid, I’ve never done anything like that in similar situations that have arisen with friends, or girlfriends, or even with myself. Just buy the dinky thing, and don’t embarass the person for wanting it. Embrace dinkiness—embrace spending small amounts of money on whatever the fuck you want, stuff that you can’t even explain why you want it, you just do. Really, it’s that you want some small trinket that, whenenver you’ll look at it, you’ll remember the nice time you had. $6 is a small price to pay for a vivid, positive memory. (In fact, when I took a girlfriend of mine to the first baseball game she had ever been to, and she had a great time, I got her whatever the fuck she wanted in the gift shop. She still treasures what she got there to this day.)

One of my favorite movie quotes is from The Life Aquatic: “Because I hate fathers, and I never wanted to be one”. I relate to it deeply. I, of course, don’t hate ALL fathers—the ‘fathers’ in that quote just means people who do shit like that. ‘Fathers’ that refuse to see the big picture and have no idea how much damage they doing. ‘I didn’t know, how could I have known’ as their perennial excuse—the truth, of course, being that they did know, they just didn’t listen. The right thing to do was there—it has a flavor to it in the air, it was palpable—and yet, they chose not to do it. It wasn’t a coin flip—it was an enchanted path presented next to a dark and cold one. But, they act like it was a mystery what might lead to what. This is the ‘father’ that people hate when they ‘hate fathers’.

My relationship with my dad has improved over the years—but, I will always see that quality in him now and again that I saw crystal clear as a kid because of that dinky baseball card. I know I haven’t fully analyzed and described it and broken it down here, but that’s because I don’t want to be embarassing. Those who can relate will relate. I don’t care if anyone else gets it.

All this to say, I hope Newson knows how badly he fucked up, because his son surely does. It’s ‘Homer being absurdly late to pick up Bart from soccer’ level bad. I know the feeling (from Bart’s side) well.

Anyways.

R.I.P. Charlie Kirk.