Hand Me Downs

As is his wont, my son was looking at passing cars and describing their capabilities to me and anyone who would listen. "That one's got ten times the horsepower of our car," he enthused.
"Really?" I said, "Why would you want that?"
"To go fast. Really fast."
That's a priority for my son. It has been for a while now. I considered my response for a moment, then: "Why would you want that?"
My son did me the favor of not rolling his eyes at me, but I knew that we were suffering a disjoint of sorts. I thought about all the things that I had to give him, but a love of speed was not one of them. An encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture? Probably not as useful to him as a working knowledge of cam shafts and fuel injection. The ability to run six miles without stopping doesn't add value to his life at this point. I learned that from my father. I didn't pick up his interest in racquetball.
Maybe it has something to do with survival. The fact that your dad was a crack shot had value outside of the anecdotal. He was providing food, or at the very least, keeping them pesky revenoors away from the still. The ability to format a floppy disc has lapsed into the useless information category. I'm not hunting or gathering. I'm moving bits of information from one machine to another. I can make obscure connections with the best of them, but plumbing generally evades me. I'm not passing along a trade or skills for a future generation.
Until the zombies come and the gas runs out. Then maybe that whole running for long distances thing will be of interest to him.