Watching my boy though, I'm filled with hope. He seems to be better suited for these challenges than I ever expected. He has, like many his age, been on the receiving end of bullying. He struggles to stand up for himself, yet he has taken actions that are honorable and admirable. He's also a tender soul who desires all people to be treated fairly and with dignity. It often grieves him more when he sees someone else get bullied than when he is the bully’s target. He doesn't understand why or how anyone could be bigoted and it angers him to see others mistreated because of their appearance or beliefs. His sense of justice is pure and fierce.
It is strange and difficult to be a teen, complicated and more bizarre these days than in my youth. Kids today do all the same things I once did: attending field trips and school dances, experiencing their first crush and heartbreak, awkwardly sitting through sex-ed, make new friends and losing old ones, learning to drive, getting their first job, taking finals and writing term papers. They do all those things with the added distractions and stresses of smart phones, social media, and modern technology. They are more interconnected yet more isolated than any other generation before them.
My son opened an Instagram account this year, something impossible to do when I was in eighth grade. The version of Mario games he plays are far superior to the Mario Bros that existed in the mid-90s. He watches viral videos, something that didn't exist when I was a kid. His favorite band is no longer my favorite band, and he has the ability to listen to any song they ever released whenever he wants, a benefit the thirteen-year-old me could have never imagined.
He's at once uniquely different from yet so much like me. I see in him the boy I used to be. Short, blond, geeky, uncoordinated, picky eater. Middle school is also an interesting time for parents. I'm watching my boy mature and evolve. Every day, he's a little bit different than the day before. Taller, smarter, wiser, funnier, moodier, more odorous. At times, I'm not ready for him to grow up. And there are days I can't wait to see the man he is becoming.
Part of being a dad is navigating disappointment when your kids make bad decisions, yet this year I am incredibly impressed by my son. Even though he is a lot like me, I think he's better than I ever was. He has demonstrated unusual insight in many private conversations, times he and I share that he treasures. In one of those discussions, he told me a story of something that happened at school (and he's given me permission to share here) that blew me away. It's a proud daddy moment and I believe our world would be much better if more kids acted like my son.
Over the last couple years, he has frequently talked to me about girls that he liked - often asking me how you can tell if a girl likes you. This isn't my area of expertise, especially considering how much I was rejected when I was a teenager. Still, I gave him the best advice I could think of in the moment. I reminded him that he's too young to date and these young crushes will prove to be irrelevant when he's older. I tried to encourage him to express his feelings and find confidence in himself. A couple months ago, he finally worked up the courage to tell a classmate he liked her. Naturally, it didn't go quite the way he hoped.
The two of them were friends and she was always kind to him. According to his retelling, she was flirtatious. With a school dance coming up, he resolved to ask her to go with him. He was nervous and scared yet worked up the courage to say it. When he asked her out, she turned him down. After I picked him up from school that day, he explained how it transpired.
"Well, it was uncomfortable. I told her I liked her and she apologized to me. She told me that she didn't feel the same way because she's gay."
I apologized to him too, and said I was proud of him because he tried. He put himself out there which takes a lot of guts.
"It's OK, Dad," he continued, "I was sad at first but then I realized she was really nice about it. Besides, we're still friends. Also, she trusted me enough to tell me something about herself that she hasn't told many people."
Late that night, after his brother and sister were in bed, he said, "Maybe it's a good thing she turned me down."
"Why is that," I asked.
"Because I don't know how to dance."
"So? Why does that matter?"
"Because it would be really awkward if I took her to the dance when I don't know how to dance."
"Can I tell you a secret?" I said. Christian nodded so I continued. "You don't need to know how to dance to enjoy it." He gave me a funny look like I was speaking a foreign language.
"It's true." I said. "You don't need to know how to dance. Most of your classmates don't know how either. You can still go, even if you don't have a date. Hang out with your friends, enjoy the music, drink the cheap and nasty tasting fruit punch. If you really want to dance, get on the floor and fake it."
"How do you fake dancing?" he asked.
I demonstrated for him. I turned on an iTunes playlist and started bobbing my head. "Like this." The head bobbing slowly transitioned into a shoulder roll, some swaying, and a foot shuffle. Then I started dancing like a white guy.
The picture below is him right before leaving for his first school dance. He went and had a lot of fun. He doesn't have a crush on that girl anymore but they're still friends. And he asked me to never dance like that around him again.
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