He Flipped Pt. I
So our neighborhood pool hosts a family dinner every Thursday evening throughout the summer, and it’s always a great time to catch up with friends. The lawn chairs come out, the kids run off, the late afternoon stretches long shadows across green grass and we forget, for awhile, that it’s exactly these evenings we pine for in the dead of winter when the pool is covered and everyone has gone into hibernation.
As I mentioned yesterday, it’s been an odd summer as the kids, particularly Alpha Male, has expanded his horizons headlong into the teen years with not a little chomping at the bit for more and more freedom. Cute Redhead and I had not anticipated the lessons would come with no warning—and even less instruction; thrown in, sink or swim, all of us. But come they did.
I watched him carry on with several of his pals over by the diving board and smiled to myself long enough to appreciate the friendships he’s had since they were all barely out of diapers…only to feel the smile slide off my face with the slithering (and I mean slithering) entrance of a few young acquaintances I’ll kindly refer to as I Don’t Like Those Kids, which is DadSpeak™ for You Know Where Most Parents Will Restrain Themselves And Avoid A Lawsuit? Yeah I’m Not One Of Them.
I saw trouble. I saw fourteen years old. I saw myself.
*beep-beep-beep on the phone to his: “Come here.” Nothing like conveying That Tone even with the latest technology.
“Yeah?”
“Hey bud, listen. You see that kid over there? The one with the bandana and the hair from That 70′s Show?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, well I don’t like him.”
“Lol okay.”
“Ha ha yeah. Well, when you go back over there…I want you to point back to me. And then I want you to tell that kid, “See that man over there with the biceps? He doesn’t like you.”
(And then he did it which wasn’t exactly what I had planned but more on that later)
And (this will shock and amaze you, I’m sure) Bad Apples suddenly made themselves scarce. But. A little too quickly and efficiently for my tastes. And then Alpha Male bounced on over all happy happy excited and intoxicated on Summer’s Freedom Nectar with, “Hey dad we’re going to to the drop-in at the rec center to play on the gymnastic equipment, okay?”
“A ha. Who’s taking you there?”
“Annie.”
“You mean Mrs. Smith?” (*approved)
“No, Annie Surname Indicating Teenager Not Adult.” (*not approved)
In half a heart beat my mind flew way back to my own Magic Summer (the one between Jr. High and High School, for the layman), and mentally ticked off all the things me and my confederates did and got away with.
So, “Lol um yeah no.”
He, of course, protested and pressed, so I went straight for the kill with, “Hey, actually buddy…I have to drive up to the store for something and ha ha! wouldn’t you know it?? I’M. GOING. RIGHT. BY. THERE! How cool is that?? I’ll drop you off, kid.”
*sad trombone
It had, obviously, all the marking of Tell Your Parents We’re Going HERE And Then We’ll All Get In My Car And Go THERE.
I think not.
The boy was not happy. At all.
In fact, he flipped.
And on the way to the rec center I scraped and clawed inside my head for the right way to start the conversation and address the discontent.
“Buddy…I’m not trying to be a jerk about this. It’s just tha—”
“—Look dad. You can not like anyone you want, that’s fine. But don’t ask me to tell someone you hate them!”
Two Things:
1) Impressed that he cut me off and asserted himself. Don’t want to encourage it, but I can’t deny the security to do so arrested my attention. Fine.
2) “Whoa. I never said ‘hate,’ kid. You’re right though…I shouldn’t have told you to do that. Honestly, I was sort of joking between you and me knowing you’d get my point. I didn’t expect you to walk over to him and actually do it. Still, I was wrong.”
And then
“…and for what it’s worth, though I don’t hate the kid…I don’t like him, I don’t trust him and I’m just fine with him realizing that I’m on the other side of the Crap he’s several times pulled at other people’s homes. Holding a very big stick.”
And though I thought I best be as firm in my parenting as I was humble in my error, he nevertheless bristled still from the embarrassment in front of his friends as well as being carted off by (horror) His Dad when everyone else got in the other car.
Arrived.
“See you kid.”
Door closes (a bit too loudly). Kid sulks off.
And I drove off. And out the parking lot. And onto the main road. And down the street toward home.
AaaaaAAAAAaaand then turned around and drove right back to sit, unseen, in the parking lot stuck between trying to learn how to figure out what trusting a teenager looks like and every fibre in me wondering why in the hell I wasn’t going inside to make sure he was really there and not already halfway to Mexico hopped up on crystal meth.
In tomorrow’s portion of this one, I’ll actually share with you all something I never share with anyone:
The phone call I actually made. To someone else.
For advice.
(shut up, Jeff.)
