News cycle sets Kid’s wheels turning

As he closes in on 7, The Kid no longer asks for spelling help on most of his Google searches.

He has passed the expiration date on struggles to spell “garbage” followed by “truck” (which he could handle at 3); “police” followed by “car” (ditto) or that annoying Canadian kid “Caillou,” (which I probably just misspelled. Let him whine about that too).

So I was eager to accept the challenge to show off how sharp my orthography game was after four decades as a paid scribbler.

“What are we looking for?” I asked, getting the rare opportunity to leave fingerprints on what I allege is my iPhone.

“Car Seuss,” I heard.

I figured I nailed it with a video of the “Super Luxurious Omnidirectional Whatchamajigger” (S.L.O.W.). Alas, he was dissatisfied by the 2003 vehicle Mike Myers rode in his 2003 vehicle “The Cat in the Hat.”

“NO! Car a zoom.”

I tried “car zoom” and got a grab bag of Hot Wheels videos and European car ads I figured he could binge-watch long enough for me to zoom to our next destination.

He pumped the brakes. “Car a suz,” he repeated, punctuating it with a stink-eye I suspect I’ll be seeing a lot in the next few years.

We stared at each other. He showed mercy.

“Try ‘CNN, car a suz.’ ” And there he was, CNN’s Carl Azuz. It was a humiliating way to learn The Kid had a favorite journalist, and it wasn’t me.

He settled into his car seat and I started driving, grateful to put this awkward episode in the rear-view mirror.

Then he started firing Carl’s quiz questions at me. I failed that too. The Kid didn’t.

I recounted the exchange to my wife that night. She happens to teach journalism at Fairfield University and Manhattanville College.

“My students hate it when I give them news quizzes,” she said. “Our son takes them for fun.”

The next day I was listening to a news station in the car. Upon his arrival, I reflexively switched to Kidz Bop (I know all of today’s hits by their remakes into “kidfriendly” — aka, mom-and-dad friendly — versions).

“No, leave this on,” he said. Until now, I believed he thought the news cycle was something with wheels. But when we returned to the car after an errand, he immediately checked for updates.

“I know this already,” he opined, frustrated that news would be rerun.

I should have seen this coming. He’s already spent too much time in the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate newsrooms. One day he grabbed the police scanner off a reporter’s desk and was about to hit the broadcast button before three journalists tackled him.

His favorite newsroom seems to be the Danbury News-Times. During a visit last winter, he settled into a vacant desk and deemed himself the police reporter. When we stopped nearby for lunch, he told the staff about his new gig, though he granted himself a promotion by declaring he worked for The New York Times. Other times he calls it the Newsbury Times.

On Saturday morning, he let me try to earn extra credit. He fired up “CNN 10,” (formerly “CNN Student News”) on my laptop and remained silent for 10 minutes (now that’s news).

He had some questions during the summary of the bleak week on the Stock Market. Something about bond yields and interest rates.

“That’s Hurricane Michael,” he explained as footage introduced the second story.

Then came the 10-second news quiz. He hit the pause button to buy me more time.

“Which of these space projects was first launched in 1967?”

Ahh, 50 years ago. Now we were in my wheelhouse.

Of course, back then I would have been watching “The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show” on a Saturday morning. But we agree on “Soyuz” as our final answer.

“I’m right! ... we’re right!” he declared.

Carl Azuz is now my favorite journalist too.