Owen’s son is having his first real ‘relationship’ and as he’s 17 years old, that’s probably a good thing. A good thing so long as he keeps his hands in plain sight at all times and doesn’t get so distracted by a girl that he takes the focus off school, grades, and his sports interests. So far, it’s been working out well. He seems enamored enough of this particular cheerleader, but he’s still uber-focused on softball and (like father, like son) weekly skiing, racquetball, and golf. In other words, he seems to have his head on straight about the whole thing and hasn’t gone so far off the deep end that he’d rather sit around mooning about a girl than reading the latest Sports Illustrated.
This is a good thing. As Owen put it, it’s time for his son to move into this phase of his life, and while I often tease him about, ‘It’s eight o’clock, do you know where your son is?’, he handles it well.
“Baseball,” he replied the other night.
“Oh, really? In the dark?”
“It’s an indoor baseball field, I’ve been there and seen it myself.”
“Hmmm….but…I mean, are you sure?”
World weary sigh, and then, “Let’s put it this way. He wouldn’t put a cup on to go see a girl.”
I couldn’t argue with that one.
Now that Parker has entered this more adult, more independent stage of his life, it’s made life a little more interesting for his dad. Owen’s life has basically gone from driving his son to various places and events every day to being driven by his son to various places and events, now that he’s got that all important learner’s permit. I suppose the next step is a car, and it’s inevitable, it’s just not happening yet. But I’m pretty sure it’s not too far off, because for the first time, I’m hearing Owen comment that it’s probably time he got a new car himself.
“And this one would go to Parker,” I said.
“Of course.”
“But not for a while,” I observed. “I mean, it’s just me but I’m not sure he’s ready for a girl AND a car. I mean, not a car with any kind of back seat or anything.”
For that one I got ‘the look’, but it’s ok. It’s OK because ‘the look’ is and always has been Owen’s way of telling me without saying a word that he was thinking the same thing, he just wasn’t ready to verbalize it yet. “I’m still,” he said, “treating this as a learning experience. It’s important to me that he understands relationships can be wonderful, but they’re a lot of work, and there’s a lot more to them than….”
“Than backseats,” I finished for him, and got ‘the look’ again. To which I could only nod in sympathy and think to myself the fact that I’ve never had to parent a teenager really hasn’t been that terrible of a thing. I’m not sure I could stand that kind of stress and worry. I have a tough enough time watching Basil get older.
My personal opinion is that Parker is a good kid and he’s certainly had a pretty solid foundation put out there for him his entire life. He’s never had time to get distracted by alcohol, drugs, and the other diversions that can take a kid off track, probably because he’s been in skis and golfing since he was something like two or three years old. He’s made a few mistakes but he’s learned from them very quickly and certainly never made them twice. Like his dad he’s very competitive, but he’s also a very courteous guy. I think he’s far more considerate than he’d admit to being because it’s just not cool, when you’re 17, to admit that. So I think he’s going to come out of this whole thing just fine, although the fact that he’s got an independent, and perhaps even a romantic, life away from home has changed the parameters of the time I spend with his dad.
In short, his dad spends a lot more time at my house. Number one, I have the better cable and finally a very nice television. Number two, my house is a refuge from the always-unscheduled, semi-irritating bouts of teenage angst and non-communication you can be subjected to when you share a roof with a seventeen year old. By comparison, the antics of my two cats and one ridiculously spoiled dog seem almost soothing by comparison. Number three, being at my house is one of the few times Owen can spend any amount of time and not be worrying or otherwise occupied with being a single parent and I think he appreciates that.
My take on it is, if Parker is going off into the world and entering the angst of dating, etc., I think it’s a great time for his dad to keep his own private life private. So it’s better if I don’t spend much time at their house. This also keeps me from having to answer embarrassing questions, an embarrassing question being any question Parker might ask me about relationships. Usually, this works out well. Sometimes it works out strangely, as it did a few Saturdays ago. Parker was out on a ‘date’, due home at eleven. Owen was on my couch, trying to figure out how to operate my DVR and watching episodes I’d recorded of both Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’d ordered two pepperoni pizzas earlier, mainly to use the yet another ‘Dominos MVP’ card I’d received in the mail, and also because you could put a filet mignon in front of Owen and a pepperoni pizza in front of Owen and the pepperoni pizza would be his choice. It was also time I’d reciprocated on buying dinner, although Dominos was hardly a fair trade as opposed to, say, seafood and cocktails at Market Street.
I suppose it was that second episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that made us both forget the time because it was just short of eleven when it ended so Owen hurriedly grabbed his jacket, both pizza boxes, and went out the door. As it turned out, he pulled up to his house just as a car was dropping off Parker, who did a double take when he saw his dad was also just getting home.
“Where have you been?” he asked, expressing his shock that anybody over seventeen might actually have somewhere to be on a Saturday night.
“What do you mean?” Owen held out the pizza boxes. “I was out getting dinner for you.”
This was accepted as logical and sensible in a way it could only be accepted as logical and sensible when heard by someone seventeen years old and too caught up in their own world to really consider anyone else’s. It was quick thinking on Owen’s part, and the kind of quick thinking he’s going to need as the next few years go on, I’m sure. I’m sure because Parker is very nearly a clone of his father, a veritable ‘mini me’ albeit just a shade taller than his dad’s 6’. You can see a bit of his Mom in his eyes but his mannerisms, coloring, sense of humor and overall personality are strictly from Owen. Along with, I have to add, a smile that could melt butter at twelve feet. All of which combined tell me Owen’s going to have his hands full with Parker and all his ‘learning experiences with relationships’ because I wasn’t the only female in the valley who developed a grown woman crush when his dad was flashing the same smile on the TV screen during the sports section of the local evening news broadcast and as I said, they’re very much alike.
Sometimes, all I can offer by way of support is a comment that at least he didn’t have a daughter. Imagine how tough that would be. And at least he hadn’t had two kids and the second was a daughter, because if one teenager was this challenging, imagine worrying over two, especially if the second was a willowy brown-eyed teenaged girl with a winsome smile. Of course I get ‘the look’ again for that, but that’s OK. They’ll both survive the whole thing, I’m sure. And in the meantime, I get to use up all those Dominos MVP coupons, and finally take the time to watch all those programs I’ve recorded.
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