We made a deal with our son - Lanre. Lanre is one of those indescribable kids every family prays to have. He is indescribable because I'm his dad, and no known adjective in the entire English dictionary can describe how much I think of him - well, I could try, but that would appear self-serving, grandiose and vain.

Anyway, Lanre started riding a 2-wheeler at 4. I went to the store, bought a 2-wheeler, called him outside, showed it to him, and put him on it. That was all. With Mom's heart palpitating uncontrollably, Lanre mounted the 2-wheeler and scurried down the street. Nothing fancy. Just rode it as if he's been doing so from birth. He quickly graduated into BMX and VANS SkatePark became his favorite hang-out, at considerable stress to poor Mom.

Anywhooo.... Lanre's been asking for a dirt bike since he was 6. Mom would not hear of it. He even pulled out a reference from one of his BMX/MotorCross magazines to show that Jeremy Mcgrath had had a dirt bike since infancy. Mom would have none of it. But Lanre persisted.

This year, we made a deal. Lanre is a very smart kid (OK, I used one adjective). Always at the top of his class, and even had to go to the next class up for some of his lessons because he was way too advanced for the lessons in his class. He would have been accellerated to the next class, if he were not too young for such accelleration emotionally - Lanre started in KinderGarten at age 4.

OK, as I was saying ..... he tops his class all the time. And he wanted a Dirt Bike. So we made him a simple deal - bring home a PERFECT report card, and you get a Dirt Bike.

Well, what did he do? He just simply went ahead and got himself a STRAIGHT A report card - he even got an A in music (and neither Mom nor I could carry a tune or play even a simple maraca :))

So, this Xmas, we found ourselves on the hook for a Dirt Bike. A very tough thing, indeed. A good Dirt Bike in our area starts at a whopping, heart-attack-inducing ..... uhhhhh ....let's just say ..... a LOT of money. But, a deal is a deal, and he held up his side of the bargain, and he is overall a very admirable individual, and, since he is into a lot of extreme sport (roller-blading, skate-boarding, BMXing, etc) and since he does all these very well, we felt the need to encourage him and his creativity. So, we got him his Dirt Bike - a spanking, brand new, green Kawasaki KTX110. Today we took him to the Prairie City Dirt Bike track and watched him go ......

Safety helmet, goggles, protector, gloves, boot, shirt and pants .... X-hundred dollars

One huge, heavy, shiny Kawasaki KTX 110 ..... Y-thousand dollars.

Watching my son have the best time of his 9-year life ..... priceless