As a TikTok influencer first and a father second, I can tell you with absolute authority and no small amount of daddy rizz that raising a kid in Los Angeles is no Sunday trip to Mendocino Farms.
That’s why when my beloved son Yugi-Oh “Vine” Norris turned 15 ½, I needed to teach him to drive in a way that was both defensive and click-worthy. After freebooting other people’s parenting vids for six hours, I came up with my best original idea since “Relatable Things Sociopaths Do” hit #6 on the self-help charts: I would teach my son to drive exclusively using the lessons from the Driver’s Test song from the 1997 Playstation classic, Parappa the Rapper.
If you’re unfamiliar with Parappa, all you need to know is that it tells the story of a hip-hop loving doggie on a journey into manhood. “Instructor’s Mooselini’s Rap” is a rippity-rap song where the aforementioned antlered authority figure teaches Parappa how to drive a car and earn his license. Since the game sold over 1.6 million copies worldwide, it was safe to say that any instructions in the song had been vetted well enough to teach my son how to “shoot skidmarks,” as I assume the race car men say.
I began by reminding my son that “we’re here, just sittin’ in the car” and that I wanted him “to show me if you can get far,” to which he replied that wasn’t enough instruction to get started. “Step on the gas,” I shrieked, filming his adorable sweaty face as he howled and swerved. Several pedestrians failed to get the memo that they had wandered on-set of a soon-to-be-viral video and yes, he made a small amount of contact with a few of their bodies, but to be fair, fam, many of them were quite old to begin with and likely had little clout to their name.
“Step on the brakes!” I gleefully sang just feet from a horrified pedestrian. “Oh, thank god,” he sighed, assuming his lesson was over. “Now step on the gas,” I screamed again. And off to the races we went, my little Yugi white-knuckling the steering wheel like Niko Bellic himself! He tried to slow down as we approached another intersection, but I recited a key lesson from the song to inspire him:
“When I say boom boom boom, you say bam bam bam! No pause in between; c’mon let’s jam!”
Weeping and plowing through another swarm of pedestrians outside CBS Studios, many of them wearing fab hot dog and princess costumes for that day’s Price is Right taping, my sweet baby Yugi became a man before my eyes, cleverly negotiating the sidewalk to spear through both glass windows of a GNC and safely return to the road.
Despite my assurances that he was “rappin’ good” so far, he continued crying and fiddling with the wipers to get the blood off the windshield. He begged me to let him stop, to turn himself into the police, but I didn’t become a social media sensation by listening to or understanding boundaries. Taking a deep breath, I pointed him toward Sunset and skillfully rhymed, “I’m glad to know which way to go, but it ain’t gonna stop me so here we go!”
Although it was timed rather awkwardly for the drive, the song had us stop to check his turn signals in the middle of the Santa Monica Blvd. intersection. As you may have noticed in the news reports (yuck, old media- LOL!) this is when the cops caught wind of our little caper. “Now turn to the right!” I commanded him, but it was about this time when a cop performed what I am told is called a “PIT” maneuver on us, and we began to spin out of control. Lucky enough for the video’s sake, this coincided nicely with my next lyric, “Woh ho ho ho! Stop the car! We got an emergency, can’t you see?”
As the cops approached us, guns pointed directly at Yugi’s head, they had a perfect opportunity to say the next line, “Do you know why we stopped the car?” but instead they said some falderal about putting our hands up and stepping out of the vehicle. I tried to correct the cop, but he was clearly too much of a basic normie to get the reference. They dragged us from the vehicle, and as you can see on the recovered footage before they kicked my phone away, I did get to choke-sing, “You forgot to close the door,” so all-in-all, a pretty successful recreation!
I have to wrap up this because we’re heading back before the judge soon, which honestly gives me another great idea for a video. Maybe it’s time for Yugi to learn how to defend himself just like Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright! Objection!
