Back to son, SIXTEEN. Holy shit. He is such an odd character for 16. Case in point, I came home unannounced the other day because I knew he was at my house with his buddies Jay, and Shortround and they were in my home alone. I remember what I would have been up too at age 16 with no parents around and money as well as time on my hands so I decided to scoot on home and make sure they were behaving. I walked up the back way and found all the blinds drawn and the lights off. I thought to myself, WTF? Do I reallllly want to go in there? Will I need brain bleach? After all, kids are different nowadays and I just don't understand how things go anymore, and I know that they are wayy more touchy feely and friendly with less respect for personal space than the guys I grew up with used to have and I did not want to be traumatized. But it was cold outside and I figured, well, I have seen all kinds of things, nothing can be that bad, so I opened the back door and stepped into the house.
The sight that greeted me was, unexpected to say the least. Jay is a musician like my son, and he was sitting next to my son on the couch and they were both arguing over a chord progression or some musician/dork thing. Shortround was sprawled out on the floor with a soda in one hand and an quesadilla in the other, watching Harry Potter. My kitchen had been violated in a foul and demented manner with eggs and Asian seasoning splattered all over the pans,and there were empty soda cans everywhere, but there was no lingering odor of weed, no blaring rap music, no evidence of any other kind of weirdness going on at all and I had to wonder, What the hell kind of kid had I raised? I know what I was doing at 16 and it resembled nothing like that. My friends and I were involved in partying out on oil leases and racing vehicles and drinking all forms of alcohol. I wont even get into some of the other stuff that went on, but lets leave it to say that those Jackass guys were copycats and candyasses compared to us and its amazing more of us didn't end up splattered all over the highways.
My son has wrecked his skateboard a few times, and he has a deep and passionate loathing for Toyota drivers because of their seeming desire to have him as a hood ornament, but he has not been in trouble or suffered any serious injuries,(know that I am furiously knocking on my bedside table that is made of wood), but he is a good kid. He is way too serious and intense at times, he has a bit of a stick up his ass when it comes to cutting loose and having fun, but I am soo damn lucky. Hes not a criminal, not a sociopath, not a bully or a coward. He has friends and he stands up for those weaker than him, and his friends are loyal to him. I cant stand his girlfriend and neither can his friends, but its not because shes a bad girl or a whore or anything like that, she is just wrong for him. Turns out my son is a bit of a prude, and while he likes looking at pretty girls, he doesn't like trashy women. Can I get a hallelujah?! No hookers, strippers or sluts in his future. He likes good girls! Yes! I swear to GOD, I damn sure don't understand that one. He is smart as hell, a little lacking in the ambition side of things, but hopefully he will find that as he gets a little older. He is going to start an early entry college program after the first of the year that will allow him to focus on music theory and more advanced classes that don't have all the screw up kids in them, because he does not suffer fools well. He lacks patience and he resents group projects where he feels like he is doing all the work and putting in the effort and then suffering when no one else contributes their part and the grades stink. Its happened to him several times this year already and he basically quit going to one class after the last time because he got all his part done, and no one else did theirs. He was pissed off, frustrated and angry and I was worried that he was going to resort to getting physical over it because I had set the rule that he could not participate in sports unless he had B's or above, and with the loss of the group project grade, that meant that was not going to happen, so his temper came out at school, and his counselor realized then that he was in the wrong place. She referred him to the college based program and told him that he was too smart and talented for any other the other programs, and that since he couldn't afford private school, it was his best bet. He will end up with 24 college credits, early entry into Portland State and the start of a good musical resume that will begin at 16 instead of 19, so hopefully his intensity and love of music will drive him to succeed, where the schools have failed him. His ability to play so many instruments will hopefully be cultivated and expanded and he will take that and make something of it, if not as a musician, maybe as a songwriter,(which he already dabbles in), or as a teacher. Either way, at 16 hes no longer a kid, though he is still my baby.
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