My son and Kyle
I shared this on Bluesky, and that's where you can see the video, but my son, who we call Tiny on social media even though he's 15 now and has almost 10 inches on me, his mother, is so very sad about this. He had a bit of a personal connection with him.
When Tiny was in second grade, he had to give an oral report about how different professions help people. At the time, we had just gotten his autism diagnosis, he was still struggling a bit in school, but he LOVED (and still does) racing. He also wasn't big on eye contact all the time at the time, so this whole getting up in front of class and speaking was terrifying him.
I talked to his teacher. She said he could turn something in on paper, but I talked to him. He said no. And his dad and I had, from the moment we suspected autism, decided that Tiny would be in the drivers seat as much as possible. So he said, "Can I do my report on race car drivers?"
His teacher said yes, thinking he'd want to just do a report about race car drivers, period.
But no, Tiny wanted to figure out how they help people. So he researched and found out that they often have their own foundations and charities and give a lot of time and money to various good causes.
And that would've been enough for a 2nd grade oral report, but then Tiny came to me and said, "You have people on Twitter that pay attention to you, right?"
I said yes. Now, I rarely put Tiny's visage on Twitter or Bluesky because I respect his privacy. But this time he asked: "Can I put a video on your Twitter?"
So I recorded him, and he asked if anyone knew a race car driver that could answer his question about how race car drivers help people.
We posted it, and I told him I didn't know if anyone that follows me would know a race car driver, but we could try.
Within a day, a follower reached out and said he worked for the company sponsoring Busch that season. He told me to send Tiny's video to him, and he'd pass it to marketing.
Within a couple of hours, I found out that they were charmed, and they were going to work it into Busch's morning the next week, when he recorded his promos and such.
Two days before his report was due, we got an email with a Dropbox link.
Tiny cried when he watched it. And then he went and crushed that oral report. (You can see a practice session we recorded in the link here.)
After that, Tiny wore Busch's hats and jackets and collected his diecast cars. He would get so excited when Busch would win.
He came home today just crushed.