Sustaining the Connection

For me, my sophomore year in high school was the turning point. Suddenly, I could feel adulthood looming on the horizon. Now nearly thirty years later, Philip is a sophomore in high school and I suddenly sense the ticking calendar. He loves me. But he needs me less than he has ever needed me. At the same time, he craves autonomy more than ever before. At unexpected times, Philip wants to fully engage. Most of the time, however, he prefers to be alone in his room with just the computer and his own musings to keep him company. But there are two exceptions to his unpredictable willingness to interact.

The first exception is the television. Philip’s tastes range from action and science fiction to documentaries. During the school year, our family rule is that the television goes off at 4:30pm on weekday school nights. That leaves only the weekend for me to share watching television with Philip. We have found a number of television shows available on DVD to watch over time. On many weekend nights, it is the last thing Philip and I do before we each head off to bed. But occasionally I get lucky. At the end of a show, when his mother and sister have often gone to bed, Philip will sometimes leverage these private times to talk to me about what is on his mind.
The other exception is sports and exercise. Philip is very willing to include me when I can help. In this new school year, it has meant signing him up for off-season indoor lacrosse in San Geraldo and regularly serving as the driver for him and other players from the area playing on his team

Philip’s intense interest in exercise went to an even higher level some time in the summer. We had expected him to sleep as late as possible each morning. But instead Philip set his alarm to go off before the first signs of light. He began doing push-ups and various abdominal exercises. Philip’s morning exercise routine has given me the opportunity to take him on multiple shopping trips to the local sporting goods stores. We’ve purchased athletic shoes, dumbbells and ankle weights. Now, half an hour before my own alarm is scheduled to play a local radio station, I hear the siren of Philip’s alarm clock. It is followed by the sound of him climbing out of his bunk bed and then either the stomp of his lunges or the clink of his dumbbells.

On an outing to the grocery store, I took Philip alone and encouraged him to browse the men's magazines. He took no interest in the publications that focused on body-building, gaming, cars or fashion. But the more broad-based publication, Men's Health, appealed to him, so I added the five dollar newsstand price to that day's grocery bill. After Philip devoured the August issue, I invested around twenty dollars to get him an annual subscription. Now every so often, he emerges from his room to show me a new exercise he read about and wanted to try.

For a while, all of Philip's dawn exercises were a private affair. But he wanted to start running. I volunteered to manage his stopwatch while he worked to improve his time on a neighborhood run of roughly seven hundred meters. Now when I hear the alarm go off, I get out of bed myself. I throw on shorts, a tank top and a sweatshirt. I knock on his door and tell him to get me when he is ready to run. Five to twenty-five minutes go by while I cat nap. If my own alarm goes off, I know Philip won't be running. But normally he chooses to run. I leap up and join him downstairs. We lace our athletic shoes together and head outside. Philip may stretch or do some quick warm-ups, but he is normally ready to go almost immediately.

With Philip at the edge of our driveway, leaning forward ready to launch into a sprint, I speak a crisp "Ready … set … go!" He disappears into the darkness down the street. I turn the opposite direction and briskly walk to our meeting point at a nearby intersection. In the quiet of the morning, I never fully lose the sound of his feet slamming into the pavement with a rhythmic beat from somewhere in the neighborhood. Shortly after I arrive at our meeting point, the rhythm starts to get louder. He picks up the pace for the final stretch of his morning run. Soon he passes the finish mark and I tell him how much time elapsed. The sound of Philip's fast, heavy breathing replaces the first rhythm with a new one. Together we enjoy the short walk back to our house.

Over the past few weeks Philip's morning sprint has become a ritual that helps me relish what is left of the time I have with Philip under my roof. But whether it is the rhythm of his running or the rhythm of his breathing, it is still the sound of the ticking calendar to me.

When Teen Life Intersects Adult Life

Teresa has been a good friend to Philip. I first saw Teresa at an off-season lacrosse game under the lights in Oxford Hills during November of Philip’s freshman year. While Amelia and I watched the game, Chloe paired off with Teresa’s younger sister to keep one another company. As it turned out, Teresa had a “new” boyfriend named Steven and he was playing Goalie on Philip’s off-season team. Even though she was there for her boyfriend, Teresa still made sure to spend some of her time after the game chatting with Philip.

His First Summer Internship

Philip did not earn any money this past summer. But he did work. During his Spring Break from Hermes High School, he interviewed for a summer internship with an online advertising agency and was offered the position. As it turned out, the real value for Philip working as the lowest man on the proverbial totem pole was found in the simple day-to-day experience.

It started with his alarm clock going off in the morning and the need to be dressed and out of the house on time to catch the County Bus. His bus trip lasted more than forty-five minutes and included a layover at the County’s central bus station in both the morning and afternoon rides home.

Once at the office, Philip went to his cubicle a few feet away from the office where his boss worked. The cubicle included an office chair and desktop computer with an internet and network printer connection. There was also a phone at the desk, but it was never switched on. The only other item of note was a slightly used cork board. Philip’s primary job was to search the internet for information of interest and provide that information back to his boss or whoever requested the research.

The internet research was pure “intern” grunt work. But Philip’s boss also gave a more long-term and interesting assignment. His boss wanted Philip to create a blog on which Philip could place affiliate advertising. At first Philip had no idea what kind of blog to create. In fact, other than reading this blog, Philip had no absolutely no experience with blogs. As a result, Philip struggled. Unlike school, Philip’s summer internship had no teacher to show him how to do his assignment. But eventually Philip decided to blog on a topic he knew well: PC Games. There were plenty of PC Games out there and new games as well as updates were constantly being churned out. While he didn’t buy or even play many of them, he had access to no shortage of people who could give their opinion and provide Philip insight from their experience. With PC Games as a topic, Philip at least had a plan.

Probably the most interesting thing Philip did over the summer was renegotiate his hours. After four weeks of sitting at his desk from 8:30am to 5:00pm doing only three to five hours of research work, Philip decided that he would like to arrive at 9:30 or 10:00am and leave at 1:30pm unless there was specific work to perform. Philip wanted to visit the beach and enjoy his summer a little more. So after discussing the matter with me and Amelia, Philip brought up the subject with his boss. As one might expect, his boss was already aware that he and his colleagues were only able to hand so much work to Philip, so the new hours worked out for all parties. For half of July and his remaining weeks in August, Philip worked just a half day at the advertising agency.

At the end of August with the new school year close at hand, Philip had rough drafts for two blog posts but had not actually created his blog. At home with Amelia, Philip reviewed the rough drafts with his mother. I as a reasonably experienced blogger worked with Philip on issues like color, font and style. Philip decided on using the Hermes High School colors for his blog and selected a font that worked for him. With Amelia, he decided to keep his posts between five hundred and eight hundred words. On the Wednesday of his final week with the advertising agency, Philip published his first blog post. And on Thursday, he deployed Google’s key-word advertising service onto his blog. And thus, Philip completed his 1most interesting assignment.

Friday August 20th was the final day of Philip’s internship. He wrote his boss a kind good-bye note and provided a link to the newly deployed blog. His boss replied with an equally kind note and an offer to serve as a reference. While the internship was nothing particularly amazing, Philip gained a taste of the working world. As for his blog and future posts, only time will tell if Philip will stick with it, or end the blog after only a small number of posts. This blog, however, will continue with at least three posts per month for the foreseeable future.

Endearing Adolescent Behaviors

Teenagers are no longer children but they are not quite adults. Part boy and part man or part girl and part woman, each is a complex mixture of maturity and immaturity, riding his or her last leg of physical, emotional, social and cognitive development up toward adulthood. Throughout history, the innocence and emerging boldness of young adolescents has been a cultural fascination.

Our culture today is particularly fascinated by teenagers. We find the combination of immaturity and emerging adulthood in a teenager highly endearing. Philip commented on his own feelings toward the immature behavior of teenage girls one day. “Lots of girls I know talk really fast and throw in ‘like’, ‘sooooo’, ‘oh-oh’ and ‘you know’ as filler,” he said. “I just find that really cute.” Moments after Philip made the comment, I remembered having similar feelings when I was his age. I remembered partially mimicking the communication pattern when talking with teenage girls. I would accelerate my own voice and throw in similar filler as punctuation to my half of the conversations. As an adult, I rarely speak with teenage girls, but when I do I now interact with extra deliberateness, extra articulation and less excitement than I would when speaking with an adult or even a teenage guy. I alter my communication behavior with teenage girls this way in order to clearly establish what I believe is an appropriate safe distance of unfamiliarity between adult men and teenage girls. As a result, it had been a very long time since I had witnessed this kind of teenage girl manner of speaking until just the other night.

The other night a group of families had gotten together for a late summer barbeque and many of the teenagers had invited friends along. The result was an unusual social mixture of adults, teens and tweens. Among the teenagers present was Philip’s friend Jocelyn. Jocelyn had recently returned from a month-long summer adventure into the Amazon jungle, and everyone wanted to hear the details of her rather unique experience.

As Jocelyn got more and more comfortable interacting with us as a group, she transitioned into what only could be described as a monologue. She spoke as quickly as she could think and released a stream of consciousness from which her story emerged in bursts and stops, often backing up to add extra detail that had initially been omitted. At least every other sentence contained the kind of filler words Philip described as cute. Jocelyn spent a while describing how her interest in the Amazon jungle first emerged early in the previous school year and then how her interest oscillated between intense interest in the Amazon and intense interest in various other summer pursuits as the school year progressed. Her recount of her oscillating interest culminated some time in April when it was only days before she had to register for the intercontinental adventure. Jocelyn’s long preamble included many references to her interactions with her mother who was clearly both very patient and very supportive throughout her daughter’s on-again-off-again decision process. I found it particularly touching how much Jocelyn chose to include her mother in this part of the retelling of her story.

Eventually Jocelyn transitioned to the trip itself. It included a brief description of the service projects she did in the villages, but she mainly focused on the details of day-to-day life. She first told us that in order to be culturally appropriate, her clothing had to be much more modest than had ever been required of her. Everything from her knees to her collar bone and shoulders needed covering. Then she talked about bugs, spiders and a large cat that pawed through the garbage one night. She ended her story talking about how she wanted to go to Africa next summer with the same teen adventure organization. The whole time Jocelyn spoke rapidly, jumped back and forth between distinct topics and punctuated her words with teen girl filler language. Philip was right. It was really cute.

The evening with Jocelyn was an important reminder to me. Though Philip and Chloe are now both in the second half of their tenure at home, I still have plenty of endearing events, actions and sayings to hear from both of them in the future. The happy memories will keep coming.

Family Summer Fun during the Great Recession

The national debt is climbing, unemployment is excessively high and every neighborhood has at least one foreclosed home sitting empty. Contractors are competing for substantially fewer bids and revenues at small businesses are down significantly. Even for those who are working traditional jobs, commissions, bonuses, raises and overtime are in short supply while pink slips, pay cuts and layoffs constantly loom.

Despite the problems in the economy in general and personal financial challenges in specific, our family has made an effort to have fun together but on a tighter budget. As summer rolls into its final month, I cannot say we have indulged in only what is free, but we have found some very good low-cost values.

Our first low-cost pleasure has been free concerts on the beach. The sun sets and the summer heat melts away in favor of warmth radiating from the sand and a cool breeze blowing in from the water. Upper body layering becomes essential: A shirt, a sweater or sweatshirt and a pullover are ideal. But one can always be barefoot. Chart-topping bands from the 60s, 70s and 80s leverage their faded stardom to attract baby boomers, gen-Xers and their families. Parking rates are high close to the beach, but for those of us who are willing to walk there are less expensive and even free alternatives.

When Independence Day came around, a larger crowd than usual watched the fireworks from a distance on a piece of open green space in our neighborhood rather than paying the pricey admission to see the fireworks up close from the celebration in the town’s largest park. We invited friends to join us beforehand for a potluck barbeque. Rita brought her son and daughter over. We also had Joshua, Debbie and Abby along with their parents, plus Kevin and Katie join us. The teens and tweens went into the back yard, played music and jumped on our trampoline until it was time to watch the fireworks. Philip and I left briefly for Philip to play in an exhibition lacrosse game at the town’s largest park that included players from the youth, high school and adult teams promoting the sport to the community.

When we thought about summer camp for Chloe, we found a great alternative in youth theater. For the cost of just one week of traditional camp, Chloe joined roughly fifty other kids ranging from ages eight to seventeen and had six weeks of three hour evening practices. She has been singing, dancing and memorizing lines. She built a small wardrobe of various costume changes. A t-shirt and a few other items will be fun clothes for the new school year and perhaps her most flamboyant costume will be what she wears this coming Halloween. Chloe has made one new friend, strengthened one old friendship, been mentored by outgoing teenagers and been looked up to by adoring pre-tweens. Production was scheduled for the final days of July. As we took Chloe to the theater two hours early on opening night, she was beaming with excitement, anticipation and confidence. The play was beautiful and Chloe is now looking forward to the cast party as well as future get-togethers with her new friend.

Our least expensive piece of family fun has been arguably our most favorite. We are reading a novel out loud to one another in the evenings before bedtime. Picture a story that combines various elements that made Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, The Da Vinci Code and Twilight popular and enjoyable reads. It may be an oversimplification, but that is what our family has found in a lesser-known novel titled Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. The thick novel spins a multi-generational tale of secrets, conspiracies, cover-ups, other-worldly beings, supernatural powers, great hidden libraries and remote caverns, good versus evil, romances and adventures. We curl up comfortably in our pajamas sinking into the soft family room furniture and wrap ourselves in blankets. We allow just enough electric light to read comfortably and augment the ambiance with candles, popcorn and hot cocoa.

As I drift off to sleep each evening, I wonder how we will remember this summer. Will we mainly remember the hardships? Or will our memories mainly include our low-cost indulgences? My guess is we will remember both, but what we will mainly remember is sharing life with each other during this particular window in the kids’ development. Fun and great memories can be had in tough times. And love can endure and flourish even in the toughest times, including the Great Recession.

Words and Acts of Affection

While the two are not particularly close, Philip and Davis travel within a loosely connected extended crowd that includes teens from all classes at Hermes and other nearby High Schools. Like Philip, Davis is fifteen and enjoying the summer between his freshman and sophomore year.

Philip met Davis one night in October at Charlotte’s house. There were perhaps forty-five teenagers present. Girls clearly but not ostentatiously outnumbered the guys. Just under half the guests were sophomores, followed by juniors, then seniors and finally freshmen. There were two freshman girls and three freshman guys: Philip was the only freshman guy from Hermes High School. Davis and the other freshman were from Conquistador.

Charlotte’s soiree highlighted the complex rituals of mutual validation high school girls carry on among one another particularly when greeting and saying good-bye. The rituals include shouting, squealing or even screaming one another’s names and nicknames, hugs and—especially when saying good-bye—the words I love you. These rituals are so important they spill over onto campus and online interactions as well as their interactions with guy friends. In social environments dominated by girls and these rituals, even the guys will cautiously hug and every so often even say I love you to one another.

But the rituals are not as simple as turning on a switch. Philip and Davis entered this crowd cautiously and likewise the crowd received them cautiously. It was two girls in the junior class, Renee and Jocelyn’s older sister Alison, who first started saying I love you to Philip and Davis. By January, the sophomore, junior and senior girls in the extended crowd had all made it a habit to say I love you to both Philip and Davis. The sophomore girls included Jocelyn, Jocelyn’s cousin Diana, one of the lacrosse player’s ex-girlfriend Teresa, Charlotte and Charlotte’s best friend Lauren, probably the most popular sophomore girl. The words I love you were often accompanied by a cautious hug. The freshman girls, however, would never give a public I love you to Philip or to Davis.

The words I love you were one thing and hugs were another. Girls nearly always give one another warm hugs. Guys—if they hug one another at all—give one another cautious hugs. The difference is that there is never any problem being close during a warm hug, but during a cautious hug, somebody is always being careful about just how close the hug is bringing them together.

Girls especially enjoy hugging in front of a camera. Girls will spend hours taking such photos. They often take the shots themselves in front of a mirror so that all present can be in the photos. Erica practically made a career of hugging in front of the camera. During the peak of her popularity, such hugs in front of the camera made Erica the other face in scores of profile pictures on Facebook. With guys, Erica would augment her sideways hug by pressing her hand and wrist onto the guy’s chest.

Since Philip never chases the camera, most pictures we see of him away from the family are taken with one or two girls sideways hugging him. During a Spring break trip to the beach on a cold day, Philip was in only four out of over a hundred taken. In each of the four, Alison and Philip had their arms around one another in a friendly, non-romantic sideways hug. After a barbeque, we saw a few pictures Philip enjoying sideways hugs with Teresa and Lauren. There were similar pictures from both events of Davis sideways hugging Jocelyn and Charlotte.

While Philip and Davis have been getting cautious hugs and the words I love you, Brian has been treated in a noticeably different manner all year. Brian is older and his popularity is huge. Brian, now between his junior and senior year, was Conquistador High School’s starting quarterback. Brian took Lauren as his date to his winter formal and Erica’s older sister as his date to his prom. No girl would ever condescend to give Brian a public I love you or hold back a warm hug. The lesson is a simple one. When a girl publicly says I love you to a guy, and hugs him cautiously, it carries genuine affection. But it also makes it clear he is not one of the hot guys and should not expect to be treated as such. In the eyes of any girl who is also a friend, Brian is unquestionably hot. But at least among older girls, Philip and Davis were not hot—at least until very recently.

On a sunny, windless and humid day in mid-July, many of the kids from the extended crowd were at a large pool together. The girls all wore two piece bikinis. The guys had their shirts off. Nearly everyone was in the pool chatting with one another. This was the first time Philip had his shirt off in front of these girls. While Davis had a belly spilling over his waistband, Philip could have been modeling for a Greek statue. His thin body and loose-fitting shirts had kept his six-pack abdomen plus his well-defined chest, shoulders and upper arms quietly hidden for months. But everyone present--including all the sophomore girls mentioned above—clearly witnessed Philip’s bulk, tone and fitness. When I picked him up and people were saying goodbyes, I noticed the change instantly. Philip was getting warm hugs from the girls and none of them were saying I love you. Davis was getting plenty of hugs, but they were all cautious and accompanied by the words I love you.

The change was not lost on Philip. Without anyone voting or and perhaps nobody even discussing it, Philip was now officially hot, and knowing it made him smile just a little.

Glitter on the Floor and Grinding at the Hips

The club’s rules were enforced to the letter. Club Avalanche’s trained security staff ensured no drugs, alcohol, weapons, or anyone out of dress code or outside the age window of fourteen to eighteen made it through the door. Throughout the evening the security staff remained an ever-vigilant presence inside the club to swiftly expel anyone looking for a fight. These strict rules made me as a parent feel good about Philip attending one of their events.

Over the course of four high school dances during his freshman year, Philip had come to like dancing. While the kind of dancing Philip’s generation practiced at Hermes High School was racier than what I had experienced in my generation, Philip seemed to have found a set of boundaries that worked for him and as such I was comfortable as a parent. After reading all of the Club Avalanche marketing material, I encouraged Philip to check out one of their events. But Philip was only guardedly interested.* He decided to check one out. But he specifically wanted to check it out without bringing a friend along, and he specifically wanted to check it out at their event in Oxford Hills, a thirty-five minute drive from Hermes. In short, Philip didn’t want to see anyone he knew when he went to his first Club Avalanche event.

The evening began with a long wait in line outside the club. The doors did not even open until ten minutes after the event was supposed to begin. I promised not to leave Oxford Hills until Philip had sent me a text message from inside the club. I took the opportunity to enjoy a stroll in downtown Oxford Hills. Half an hour before the event was supposed to begin, Philip sent me a text commenting on his discomfort with the crowd waiting outside the club. Most of the teens in line were displaying a tough exterior, and nobody was using the opportunity to meet new people. Philip did not see anyone else who was alone. He saw groups of guys and he saw large groups of girls with just one or two token guys in tow. He was still only guardedly interested when he finally made it inside.

Colored lights waved. Strobe lights flashed. A DJ played all of the most popular dance songs. Philip was immediately disappointed with how loud the DJ was playing the music. It was impossible for two people to hear one another talking. Philip scanned the room before taking any kind of action. And then he saw it. Over half of the kids were grinding while they danced. There were no rules against grinding or any other sensual behavior at Club Avalanche, although the dress code meant everyone kept their clothes on. There were no drugs, alcohol, weapons or threatening behavior inside the club. But any other rules that one might infer were not enforced at all. There were no parents, no teachers, no school administrators, no coaches and no other rules. If it was consensual and could happen without putting someone out of dress code, it was happening in multiple places inside those four walls.

After assessing the overall mood and climate in the room, Philip started dancing to the loud, fast hip-hop beat. He worked his way behind a girl close to his age dancing without a partner. He had learned to approach cautiously, giving the girl ample opportunity to give him a subtle signal of rejection. At Club Avalanche, he found he was more likely to be rejected than was the case at a Hermes High School dance. But he had expected as much, given he was a stranger to everyone there. Some girls simply didn’t dance with strangers and it wasn’t always apparent who would dance with strangers and who would not. If the girl in question leaned back into his chest, Philip would share the rest of the song with her.

From the proximity of the dance floor, Philip saw the grinding live and up close. Some of it was overt and explicit. But much of it merely involved taking the contact he considered to be normal and extending that contact lower. And so Philip decided to try out the less explicit grind dancing. He began dancing up to a slightly older girl he had already seen grinding with more than one guy. As he got progressively closer, she continued to welcome his advances. With his hands firmly on both her hips, he cautiously moved his hip forward until it was firmly pressed against her buttock. The move was welcome, so he slowly turned to press both his hips against her from behind while she leaned her full body back into him and continued dancing. She seemed both satisfied and distant. His mouth was just a few inches from her ear, but he knew that the music was far too loud for her to hear anything he might say.

The song ended quickly and Philip saw his first grinding partner move on to someone else. He continued the pattern of dancing up to a girl, first securing her acceptance to dance in close proximity and then securing her acceptance to grind. Not all girls who leaned back into him agreed to the grinding, but many still did. With the end of each song, a new dance partner needed to be found. Dancing among the grinders, Philip experienced a surreal, high-energy, wordless cross between speed dating and hookup culture. Eventually, he took a break and visited the men’s room. When the door closed behind him, the music volume suddenly dropped. He felt a numb buzzing sensation in his ears. Then over the music and the buzzing, he began to hear a small group of guys talking about the girls they had been with so far that evening. Their misogynistic attitude annoyed Philip. And yet, without the ability to talk, girls and guys who had not met before were reduced to objects of consensual play out on the dance floor. This is just stupid, he thought.

Philip left the men’s room and returned to the edge of the dance floor. He scanned the room with a newly focused set of intentions. This time, he was looking to identify the girls who were not grinding. He picked up that the girls who were younger and avoiding the center of the dance floor were generally non-grinders. Although members is this segment of the population were the least likely to welcome him to dance in his regular fashion, these younger, more cautious girls were the ones on whom he focused his attentions for the rest of the evening.

At his request, I picked up Philip outside the club about half an hour before the evening’s event officially ended. He didn’t have much to say, except to tell me he was not planning on attending another one of their dance events any time soon. A couple weeks later, he told me he had no intention of ever returning. And as time passed, Philip slowly disclosed the full story of the grinding culture and his brief experiment with it. He had no interest in grinding, especially with complete strangers. And he really hated that fact that he could not even talk to his dance partners over the loud music.

While Philip was embarrassed to disclose the specifics of his experience, it was hard not to be impressed with his depth. His morals and ethics did not grow out of a “do and don’t” list imposed from the outside. Instead, he merely values relationships. And there were no relationships—not even casual friendships—to be found on the Club Avalanche dance floor: just glitter.

* See my comment on this post for an important explanation for those of you who read this blog regularly.