Kiki has decided that a Lamborghini is an angry car and a Rolls-Royce is a happy car.

I pushed on this for a while looking at the massive collection, because I needed to know what we were working with. Turns out: angry cars are loud, low, and sound like they're mad at you. Happy cars are quiet, smooth, and sound like nothing at all. He's eight. He's not wrong.

We went to a Cars and Pizza meet in Oakville. Small, low-key, the kind of thing where you can let an eight-year-old off the leash a bit and just trust he'll wander back when he gets hungry. He did. Multiple times. He has Opinions now, mostly downloaded from Carwow on YouTube, and he is very eager to explain to his father why one car is faster than another. Half of it is right. The other half I let ride, because watching him work it out in real time is the entire point of bringing him.

These meets didn't exist when I was a kid. My access to exotic cars was Miami Vice reruns, action movies I was not allowed to watch and posters in my friends bedroom. Kiki was standing two feet from a Ferrari F8 GTS, casually. Spoiled.

My pick of the day was a Ferrari F430. Not the fastest thing there, not even close. But the F430 is the one I want to have one day. Late enough that Ferraris started being reliable, early enough that you could still get one with a gated manual. I've wanted a 308 since I was Kiki's age and Magnum was on TV. The F430 is the grown-up version of that fantasy, the one that might actually be attainable without joining a cult.

On the drive home he told me he wants to be a race car driver. (We watched the F1 movie. Highly recommend it, by the way) I didn't shoot it down. I did point out that there are a lot of jobs near cars like designers, engineers, photographers, people who write about them, people who restore them, people who make specific parts, the world is bog and there are lots of options. I hope it opened up his mind but he's eight. He has time.

I wish I could have brought my angry car today.

My son's at that age where he wants space, but he doesn't have a phone, and I'm not ready to hand him one just so I can check in. Enter the walkie talkies. I kept blowing money on cheap Amazon ones that died fast and barely had range, and I got tired of it. I picked up the Cobra ACXT345 form Costco while doing some shopping around Christmas. Full disclosure, these are actually built for hiking, not kids, but that's exactly why I got them. If I'm giving my son room to roam, I need to know I can reach him when it counts. The park down the street is about a kilometre away and that's exactly as far as I've tested it, which is all I needed. I haven't touched half the features but I didn't need to. I just needed one thing: reach my kid without giving him a phone. Done. It’s actually fun going back and forth I must say. Just make sure you both are on the same channel. They're about $120 at Best Buy. If that's too steep, there's a cheaper option at about $70 that covers 25 km of range linked below.