Talk it up or Watch it Fail

Bradley was on the far end of the periphery of Philip’s social network. He was a reasonably popular junior and had been the second string quarterback at Conquistador High School, one of Hermes’ main rivals. For his seventeenth birthday, Bradley’s family gave him what was intended to be a very generous gift. They rented a nice facility, hired a DJ and sponsored a teen dance on Valentine’s Day evening. It was on a Sunday night, but all the schools in the area were closed Monday for President’s Day.

Bradley put up a nice invitation on Facebook. He invited all his friends and encouraged them to invite others. The event clearly stated that one did not need a formal invitation to attend. The attendee list included students from Hermes, Conquistador and Santa Carla. Since Bradley was a junior from another school and Philip was only a freshman, they were not friends on Facebook. Nonetheless, Philip recognized several friends on the attendee list, including a few of the girls who had gone snowboarding with him two weeks earlier. Philip was nervous about going. But between the event’s natural appeal and Amelia and I encouraging him, Philip decided he would go.

On the Facebook event page, over fifty people had accepted Bradley’s invitation and over seventy had said maybe. More than half were girls. I dropped Philip off a fashionable half an hour after the start time to what seemed like an overflow crowd. But my initial perception proved wrong. The teens were hanging around outside because the party inside was nearly dead. Philip estimated there were fifteen girls and thirty-five guys at the peak of the party with perhaps a total of seventy-five if one were to count those who made a brief appearance and then left. Philip managed to enjoy just two dances with the two girls he knew from snowboarding. Then after less than an hour the dancing had stopped because the girls were too embarrassed to dance on a near-empty dance floor. In short, the dance was a miserable failure and Bradley must have been crushed.

Per his request via a text message, I picked up Philip an hour before the dance officially ended. We talked about the dance and why it might have been such a failure. It wasn’t Bradley’s popularity. And it was not the appeal of the event itself. One could not fault Bradley and his family for not offering alcohol to minors, but that would have clearly solved the attendance problem. And so in the end it came down to promotion. Bradley simply did not invite enough guests and most importantly he did not talk up the party enough—if at all. Philip’s own reluctance to attend the party was anecdotal evidence enough of this problem.

Understanding Bradley’s mistake in getting people to attend was important. At least it was important in my mind. Philip’s own birthday event, a party that had no DJ and no special facility was scheduled for the following week. The appeal was only a backyard campfire and the chance to hang out with one another. Philip added a mere five people to his Facebook guest list and telephoned just two girls he knew who did not have Facebook accounts. Beyond that, Philip was not comfortable promoting his party.

Philip’s best friend from Oak Hills Charter School, Joshua, arrived right at the beginning of the party. But Joshua’s sister Debbie was grounded and did not join them. Philip and Joshua hung out by the campfire with a CD playing a mix of alternative and hip-hop. Forty-five minutes into the party, the moment of fashionable lateness, Vienna arrived with her best friend and two guys Philip considered friends. Nonetheless, that party was still three to five people short of critical mass. The group of six hung out by the campfire enjoying one another’s company, but the group conversation started to die after about half an hour. Philip suggested they go inside and watch an instant movie. That bought them the length of the movie. But after that Philip was out of ideas and suggested they call it a night just an hour before the scheduled end to the party.

Half the people who had said they were coming to Philip’s party did not come because they decided to go to a basketball game. And none of the people who had said maybe came. Had it not been for Vienna, the party would almost certainly have been only Philip and Joshua. As the evening progressed, I understood why so many parents turn a blind eye toward alcohol at teen parties. But that is not an option we are going to seriously consider. What it means is that until Philip is comfortable actively promoting his parties, there is no point in having another. The days of Amelia or I contacting the parents of Philip’s peers to ensure they attend his parties are behind us. It is up to Philip to make his own social life happen. We’ll have to see how that plays out. At least Philip did not suffer Bradley’s humiliation.

A Daddy Daughter Shopping Trip

Philip was spending the weekend snowboarding with friends. Amelia was on her annual girls’ weekend away. Both were tucked away in a mountain community at least four hours from home. Amelia was with about five friends in a townhouse. Philip was with about thirty-five friends in a lodge. Chloe and I had an entire weekend to do “daddy and daughter” things all by ourselves. We ate the food the other two never wanted to eat. We watched a movie that appealed to us alone. I took her to her basketball game and watched her score three points between a foul shot and a regular basket. But my favorite shared activity of the weekend was shopping together in a girls’ beauty shop that just opened in town.

The store was stationed right next to one of the two pharmacies in Hermes. While Chloe grabbed a shiny metallic basket to shop in earnest, I engaged the store manager on her company’s business plan. The beauty store was actually owned by the pharmacy’s parent company. The idea was to expand the pharmacy’s sale of beauty products by winning business away from the department stores in the mall. The inventory was more high-end than what was normally found in a pharmacy. Additionally, the beauty store had dedicated staff. That day the store manager had one sales assistant. Unlike their department store counterparts, they were not wearing lab coats. Instead they were dressed and made up as if they knew what they were doing by experience, not just training.

While I was asking the store manager about daily sales volume during their first quarter of business, Chloe came by to show me her likely purchase which was a $16.99 twist out container of lipstick. But Chloe called it lip gloss. “You can get the lip gloss if you want, Chloe. But that will probably be all you can get, since you just have twenty dollars.”

Chloe skipped away happy she could get the lipstick. “I’m pretty sure this is what I want to get,” she said with giddy eagerness. “But I want to keep looking around.” Chloe scoured the store. She spent a long time looking at the nail polish. But she also looked at eye shadow, the rest of the lipstick offerings, foundations, powders, moisturizers and everything else that lined the store’s shelves. While the store manager was describing to me the growing interest the store had from middle school aged girls, Chloe came over to ask, “What is mascara?”

After about twenty minutes in the store with no other customers. I figured I owed the store manager an opportunity to sell me something. “I’d like to get some perfume for my wife as a Valentine’s Day gift,” I said. “Can you recommend a few choices?” The store manager brought me over and gave me her sales presentation. From my MBA perspective, there was not much depth to the sales presentation. She simply began straying pinky-length strips of hard paper sticks from the test bottles and asked me my opinion. After the first three, I suggested I narrow my choices down to no more than two and test them out of each of Chloe’s wrists.

After smelling about eleven different perfumes, Chloe came by again having completed her self-guided tour of the store’s entire inventory. She still wanted to purchase the $16.99 lipstick and I told her she could buy it when we leave. Then I recruited her to be the true tester for the perfumes I was considering for Amelia. Chloe was immediately excited by the idea. She had looked at the perfume containers, but hadn’t smelled them at all. Suddenly there were eleven little scent sticks for her to inspect with her own olfactory senses. Trying on multiple perfumes also gave me the perfect platform to ensure Chloe took the scheduled shower I promised Amelia I would enforce.

With Chloe and I as the only customers in the store, the sales manager and her assistant indulged Chloe with their attention. They suggested five sprays rather than two: One at each elbow, one at the base of each hand, and one on the back of the neck. The first three were my top choices from the eleven original sprays. Then based on my feedback, they suggested two more. The final spray to the back of Chloe’s neck carried the day.

We all went to the check-out counter satisfied. Chloe purchased the most expensive container of makeup she’d ever owned. I had formulated an MBA case study if I ever needed one. Amelia had one of the nicest Valentine’s gifts I had ever given her on its way. And the staff at the beauty store had a nice sale of around six percent of their daily quota added to that day’s volume. The purchase came with a few free promotional giveaways for Chloe which topped it all off.

We put our bags in the car and indulged in one last daddy-daughter ritual. We walked into our favorite local coffee shop. I ordered black coffee. Chloe ordered a buttered croissant and a hot chocolate. We sat together for fifteen minutes reviewing our shopping trip to the beauty store. It was a fun trip and a fun weekend for both of us.

A Modern Valentine’s Tale Begins

Erica’s treatment of Philip rapidly went from flirtatious to contemptuous as if she was preparing for life as paparazzi-harassed starlet. After turning down Philip’s invitation to go out, Erica blocked him on Facebook. It was unique. Philip knew there was at least one other guy who had asked her out that same week and he did not get the same treatment. Erica hadn’t even unfriended the football player she had the ten day hot-and-then-cold relationship with shortly after Philip and Erica met. But there it was for Philip: The digital equivalent of a restraining order.

Philip did not know what to think. But he was not intimidated and genuinely wanted to make things right by apologizing or confronting whoever might by telling Erica lies about him. But when he asked Erica directly, she flatly denied she had either blocked or unfriended him. “It must be a mistake,” she replied. But not long after she was heard spreading jokes about “not being friends any more.” And so Philip moved on. But a thin grey line had been drawn in the sand. If Erica had her way, one would be on either winning Team Erica or losing Team Philip. But the actual teaming that has developed appears to be more negative than positive and Philip was hardly losing. Erica has created and now leads something that would be more accurately described as Team against Philip since Erica is against Philip. For his part, Philip has found himself surrounded by a growing crowd of guys who have developed a particular dislike for Erica. He has become the rallying figurehead for Team We’re Sick of Erica.

This new set of guys rallying around Philip waste no time pointing out something they claim Erica does with regularity. Erica will draw a guy in with a smile, batting eyelashes and other flirtatious actions. But in such cases Erica has no real or genuine interest in the guy. And if the guy gets bold enough to pursue Erica, her treatment of the guy quickly swings into reverse, “Ew! No!” The result for Erica is a small crowd of timid, fawning, emasculated admirers. Even Erica's ex-boyfriend Bruce from the football team has not been immune. Not long after Bruce got his driver’s license, Erica had recruited him as her chauffer.

A teenage girls’ most often used offensive weapon against a teenage guy is to attack his dignity by making him look and feel undesirable. And Erica chose to bring the full force of her personal arsenal toward this end with Philip. It is worth noting here that teenage guys use the same weapon against teenage girls, but they also have other offensive weapons available to them in their social battles with teenage girls. Words like Slut, Whore and Bitch attack a teenage girl’s character and the appropriateness of her conduct. And the equivalent accusations against guys hold much less social stigma.

As a family, we have taught Philip not to go on the offensive. And so far, he understands the long term disadvantages of going on the offensive and is not facing severe temptation to do so. Instead we have taught him how to tactfully take a strong defensive position. “Yep. She’s really, really mad at me about something. Just ask her,” he might say with a smile and matter-of-fact demeanor. But he leaves the use of crude words and degrading stories for others. As a member of the lacrosse team, he gets to listen to it often in the safety and privacy of the guys’ changing room.

Initially, those willing to show Philip support appeared to be guys only. And to be fair, a girl would open herself up to teasing and ridicule if she were to show too much open support for Philip or any guy for that matter. But Valentine’s Day provided one girl with the opportunity to tell Philip he was far from undesirable. Hermes High School had a fund-raiser in which one could have a card and a rose delivered to any student on campus during the last day of school before Valentine’s weekend. Roses and cards were delivered during the period just before lunch. Philip was in the gymnasium for Physical Education. There were perhaps one hundred students—Freshmen and Sophomores—in the gymnasium when the delivery was made. Four Valentines arrived. Three were gifts to girls from their boyfriends. The fourth was an anonymous Valentine for Philip.

The guys and even a few girls in the gymnasium erupted with clapping and cat-calls. Some were happy merely to have a guy receive a Valentine. Others took particular pleasure in seeing Philip receive a token that underscored his desirability among teenage girls, despite all of Erica’s efforts. And although he did not know it at the time, the anonymous sender herself—a girl named Vienna—was present. In the moment, Philip had no idea whether the Valentine was genuine or a prank, so he approached the situation with caution that proved painful for Vienna to witness. Vienna carefully watched Philip as he kept his expression stoic while he accepted the gift from one of the school administrators and endured the more rowdy element’s teasing words. Vienna must have wondered if she had made a huge mistake sending Philip the anonymous Valentine. A few hours later, her status on Facebook merely read, “Valentine's Day...stinks.” Throughout the long weekend, friends left ineffectually supportive comments in response to Vienna’s words, but her only response was “None of you understand.”

Late the following week, Philip had received enough hints from mutual friends to know with near certainty that Vienna was his anonymous Valentine. He knew her, but not well. Philip liked Vienna and he thought she was pretty, but for several months prior up until less than twenty days earlier Philip’s heart and Philip’s eyes had belonged solely to Erica. His experience with Erica made Philip want to be cautious. How and when Philip will respond to Vienna’s crush and if Vienna’s crush on Philip will endure the wait and Philip’s unwillingness to show immediate enthusiasm is an open question. But that is why this is merely the beginning of a modern Valentine’s tale.