The Double Scoop Boy

Summer is now upon us. School is over. Lacrosse season is over. Chloe celebrated her eleventh birthday. And last weekend we enjoyed this summer’s first ballroom dance event. The whole family went. Chloe brought her friend Wendy along. Philip and I wore dress pants, dress shirts, ties and blazers. Amelia, Chloe and Wendy wore formal dresses. The event was held at an ideal location. Just outside the ballroom was a large deck overlooking a three acre pond brilliantly reflecting a rising full moon.

Chloe and Wendy were nearly the only tweens who showed up for the dance event. There was just one tween boy besides them. Everyone else was either a teen or an adult. As the evening began to move forward, Chloe and Wendy discovered that nobody was asking them to dance. The one tween boy present was sticking close to a handful of teenage girls who were his sisters and cousins. And the thirteen and fourteen year old teen boys were giving their attention exclusively to the teenage girls. Eventually, the two came over to me to complain about their predicament. “Nobody is asking us to dance,” they said in near stereo.

“Why don’t you two go together, walk up to a group of boys and ask two of them to dance?” I asked. Their response was immediate, negative, certain and in perfect stereo. “Well,” I continued. “What if I offered you ice cream as a reward for asking?”

Wendy continued to shake her head, but Chloe got a gleam in her eye and said “Maybe.”

“Alright,” I responded. “You two decide what boys you would like to ask. Come back and talk to me at the end of the next song.”

Chloe knew how best to get what she wanted from me. So at the end of the next song Chloe walked up to me with Wendy at her side and said, “We want to know how much ice cream we get.”

I paused and looked around the room. “There is one boy your age in the room. Asking him to dance will get you a kiddie scoop. You can take turns asking him.” Having asked a boy to dance last summer, Chloe was much more comfortable with the idea than Wendy. Chloe simply waited for the next song to begin and then approached the tween boy who immediately accepted Chloe’s proposal. Chloe returned to us victorious at the beginning of the next song, but Chloe’s success did not inspire the necessary bravery in Wendy. But Chloe’s bravery had inspired the same in another. The tween boy approached us one song latter and asked Wendy to dance.

Getting the tween boy to dance was a good start, but I knew it was not enough. I carefully scanned the younger teen boys not knowing exactly what I was looking for until I spotted him. The Double Scoop Boy was standing confidently with three other boys close to his age. I had already seen him dancing with plenty of girls close to his age. He was not shy, and he seemed to be genuinely enjoying the evening. He had brown eyes, dark hair, light skin and just a few freckles. He was wearing a well pressed white oxford shirt, dark pants and a dark tie. His face still held some of the angelic features of a young boy. “OK, girls,” I said. “If you ask any teen boy to dance, I’ll buy you a single scoop. And if you ask the dark-haired boy in the white shirt to dance, I’ll buy you a double scoop.”

Chloe continued to take the lead. She asked a tall boy with a crew cut who was perhaps fourteen years old to dance. Then two songs later, Chloe approached The Double Scoop Boy and asked him. The Double Scoop Boy jokingly acted deeply flattered by opening his mouth and holding both palms forward before he relaxed into a smile and accepted Chloe’s proposal. He took advantage of the fact that he was taller than Chloe to twirl her as often as the music would allow.

The dance with The Double Scoop Boy had the effect I had intended. The boy with the crew cut stepped forward and asked Wendy to dance. Everyone saw the two girls having fun twirling beneath their young teen dance partners. And for the rest of the evening, Double Scoop Boy, the tween boy and a small band of young teenage boys (including one boy who had a mustache) kept Chloe and Wendy on the dance floor as often as any teenage girl was on the dance floor.

In the end, we all had a great evening. And now I am looking forward to another great evening. I will be spending it with Chloe and Wendy at the local ice cream shop where they will claim the double scoops I promised them.

Sharing the Mundane

Love is what emotionally healthy people do. Nearly everyone wants to love and nearly everyone wants to be loved. I love my wife and my children, and they in turn love me. The key difference that makes love greater than like is sharing life together. This is not to say that people who like each other do not share life together. But what I am saying is that sharing life together is an essential ingredient in love, but it is not an essential ingredient in like.

When I look back at the most meaningful memories in my life, nearly all of them were shared with someone close. And the most meaningful of all were shared with a loved one. This comes as no surprise. But within that collection of meaningful memories, there is a surprise. The surprise is that what was going on during so many of those most meaningful memories was something entirely mundane. In fact, the more I love someone, the more I want to share the most mundane parts of that person’s life.

With Chloe for example, it would have been both easy and normal to simply let her out of the car during the handful of mornings this past spring when I dropped her off at school. But Chloe had a request that once asked I was quite happy to grant. Chloe wanted me to walk with her from the parking lot across the street. In fact the further I walked with her from the parking lot to her classroom, the happier she would be. And sure enough, now that the school year is behind us those memories of walking Chloe across the street those few mornings are particularly treasured memories.

Over four years older than Chloe, Philip is significantly more complicated. His natural desire to explore and assert his independence and my natural desire as a parent to ensure he explores and asserts his developing independence often operate in direct conflict with our mutual desire to share life. If I take too great an interest in Philip’s affairs—especially his most private affairs—Philip reacts quickly and decisively to protect his independence. For his most private affairs and musings both Amelia and I now need to let Philip come to us. And when he does, it is always a treasured memory.

The imbalanced interest in sharing life between a teenager and his or her parents is often a source of great frustration on both sides. But I think I have found the solution to this frustration. The solution is found in sharing the mundane whenever the opportunity presents itself. My grandfather, for example, taught me how to drive a car. He endured what was in theory endless hours of driving nowhere particularly special. But I expect my grandfather never tired of my teenage driving. I got to assert my independence. He got to support it. And the two of us got to share the mundane. My grandfather died over a decade ago. And my one of my most cherished memories of him was the driving lessons.

And so the other morning, I chose to seize an opportunity to share a mundane part of Philip’s life. As he was heading out to walk to the city bus stop in order to get to work, I asked him if I could walk with him. He was happy to say yes to a companion for the otherwise uneventful walk. But for me, I got to experience a small part of his teenage life. The walk took only five minutes. And then we waited for the bus for another five. We talked, but we didn’t talk about anything particularly interesting. And there were long stretches of silence. When the bus came, I couldn’t help but notice how different it seemed watching him get on a bus to go to work from watching him get on a bus to go to school. If nothing else, he was at least ten years younger than everyone else riding the bus. He seemed to step onto the bus differently. There was no threat of accidently doing something socially inept. He simply got on the bus and the bus simply left.

Alone at the bus stop, I was glad I had elected to take that mundane walk. I will never forget that walk, and I will never forget the image of Philip disappearing into the city bus. I look forward to sharing more mundane parts of Philip’s life, perhaps even more than I look forward to sharing the non-mundane parts of his life.

Taking it in from the Bleachers

There is a unique smell that permeates a high school campus in the springtime. The smell gets especially pungent in the afternoons on and around the athletic fields. It is as if a unique grass grows on high school athletic fields and nowhere else, yet the use of artificial turf does little to deter the emergence of that springtime high school campus aroma. It seems to hold the same on both rural campuses as well as urban campuses. And the afternoon pungency lingers well into evening for any event that draws in parents and other members of the community after hours.

The first day I picked up Philip after lacrosse practice, the smell of the campus and the athletic fields brought me back almost instantly to my own high school decades in the past in a completely different part of the country. It was nearly the same smell. I could hear the lacrosse coaches shouting commands targeted toward the young adolescent male athletic psyches. The inflections Philip’s coaches put into each word echoed the same authority and temperament of my own high school coaches.

I made it a point to attend as many lacrosse games as possible during Philip’s freshman season. To sit on the bleachers for home games, I had to ascend a steep incline that normal erosion would never permit, but earth-moving equipment had nonetheless established in order to ensure level ground for the football-soccer-lacrosse field below the equally level softball field above. For the first lacrosse game, I had to also endure not-yet-mowed thick grass and weeds that had grown up during the intense seasonal rainfall that had ended only a couple weeks before. A parent I recognized jokingly told me to check for ticks when I reached the foot of the bleachers.

I was not expecting to see Philip get much game time as a freshman. Instead I was expecting a token amount of time at the end of each game in which the score was not too close. Early in the season, my expectations were mostly true. Philip and his freshman peers did not see any field time until Hermes was ahead by double digits. But over the course of the season that slowly changed. The first freshmen to see significant game time were Walter and one other particularly large, aggressive football player. What they lacked in core skills, Walter and his freshman football comrade made up for with tenacity and raw determination. Walter was particularly and impressively aggressive. But for Philip in his fifth lacrosse season, seeing Walter regularly drop the ball was a source of some frustration.

Philip’s day came later in the season. The older, more experienced players began to notice Philip’s competence and consistency perhaps two or three weeks before the coaches did. Philip knew the plays, could keep the ball in his net even when double-teamed and had an eye for when to pass for a teammate to score. By the final games of the regular season and all the way to the championship game, Philip was part of the regular varsity line-up rotating into the midfield, normally as center.

It was a slow change I witnessed while drinking in the familiar smells of a springtime high school campus. As Philip’s freshman season unfolded, I remembered knowing players who were like Philip. As freshman they slowly gained the respect of their coaches and teammates. Philip could not claim to be a star, but he was emerging. His position on next year’s varsity line-up was no longer in question.

To me taking it all in from the bleachers, it was the emergence that was so captivating. And when combined with the smell of the campus and my own high school memories it all evoked, I became keenly aware of the ticking clock. Philip has been under our roof for over fifteen years. But in the spring of his eighteenth year, Philip will graduate from Hermes High School and will soon after head off to pursue his adulthood. I want to savor every moment of what remains of Philip’s time under our roof. And somehow, the smell of the Hermes High School campus is part of that savor.

The Age Gender Gap

May is Prom month for high school students. Juniors celebrate their final weeks as underclassmen and look forward to their senior year. Seniors celebrate their final weeks of high school and look forward to life beyond high school. And a large number of freshmen and sophomores join in the celebration as dates. And it is here that we find a huge gender disparity. Nearly all the younger dates are girls. According Philip, only one freshman guy at Hermes High School was even asked to the Prom, and the guy in question turned down the older girl’s invitation.

As the spring weeks moved forward, Philip’s female classmates began posting Facebook comments about going to Prom, buying their dresses and scheduling make-up and photo appointments. The comments were followed closely by actual photographs of these classmates posing at various stages of the process with each other and with their older dates, culminating in them all wearing formal attire. And within a few days after Prom, many of Philip’s female classmates disclosed they were in official relationships with their older Prom dates. Formspring then provided the venue where an endless stream of questions about these girls’ sexual activity were first rebuffed and then answered.

In stark contrast, Philip is still saving his first kiss for someone special. At this age, the girls on average have experienced significantly more “relationship firsts” than their guy counterparts: First dates, first boyfriends, first break-ups, first kisses, first Proms, as well as plenty of “first” sexual milestones.

As a parent, I am in no rush to see Philip chalk up a bunch of these “firsts” at such a young age. But it is becoming painfully clear to me that Chloe’s freshman year of high school will be fraught with much more danger as well pressure to enter into “firsts” than Philip has experienced during his freshman year. And it is simply because Chloe is a girl. For teenagers, there is an age gender gap, and there always has been.

For Philip, the age gender gap played out effectively in his favor for the first time one recent Saturday evening. He hosted a teen social at our home that was arguably the best one yet. Its success came as a pleasant surprise.

Philip and Chloe were both at an unrelated early evening event on a Saturday where a bunch of kids they knew were in attendance. Chloe was actually the one to have the idea. “Can Philip and I invite our friends back to our house for a teen social? I thought we could rent the movie, Push.”

“Check with your brother, but sure. It sounds like a good idea,” I answered. An hour later, there were eight kids ranging from Chloe’s age to Philip’s age at our house. We simply brought out soda and popcorn we already had. Amazon.com’s instant movie service allowed us to rent Push for just a few dollars.

Philip was joined, by two other fifteen-year-old freshman guys: His best friend Joshua and another guy named Kevin. Then there were three thirteen-year-old girls: Joshua’s sister Debbie, Debbie’s best friend Katie, and our family friend Ashley. Chloe was joined by Joshua’s youngest sister Abby who was only six months older than Chloe.

We had been observing a relationship developing between Debbie and Kevin for several weeks. Things solidified as Kevin and Debbie sat close with Kevin’s arm wrapped fondly around Debbie’s shoulder. According to Chloe, the two kissed some time at the end of the evening when no adult was there to witness the event. Kevin later told me it was their first shared kiss.

What I think made the evening so enjoyable for everyone was that the guys were not feeling inferior to the girls, and the girls were clearly enjoying the mostly respectful attention from the older guys. The one possible exception might have been Joshua who was more interested in gaining Philip’s attention than the attention of either Katie, Ashley or his sister.

When the movie was over and we were waiting for rides to arrive, the guys got on their hands and knees to begin forming a pyramid for my camera. Philip was in the middle. Katie climbed on top of Philip and Kevin. Debbie climbed on top of Philip and her brother. Ashlee and Chloe helped Abby up to top off the pyramid.

While his girl peers were posting very grown-up looking Prom photos to Facebook, Philip’s image appeared on Facebook at the base of a very not-grown-up looking pyramid. For Philip, the age gender gap is keeping him young for just a little bit longer.

Commercial Teen Dance Events

Bubonic is the name that was given to the dreaded plague that ravaged western civilization during the Dark Ages. It is also the name that was given to a teen dance club that operated in the 1980s not far from where I grew up. I knew The Bubonic mostly by reputation. I had a reasonably close friend who went regularly. It was housed in an otherwise unused warehouse at a light industrial park. The music was punk and the more raucous new wave styles of the time. My reasonably close friend said he went there to slam dance.

Once I had access to my own car, my curiosity about The Bubonic needed to be satisfied. My best friend and I dressed in faded blue jeans, un-tucked button-up shirts and sneakers. We parked easily enough and could hear the music emanating from the warehouse building with the clarity and volume going up each time the door opened. But then we saw some of the other guests for the evening and we began to seriously question our attire. A guy and a girl strolled past. Each had long, spiked jet black hair and pale skin. They were each wearing a metal-studded black leather jacket, a tight white t-shirt, black pants and black boots. The girl’s boots had high heels. The girl had put on black lipstick and black nail polish. She had large metal earrings that matched the metal studs on her jacket. The guy had a chain metal choker necklace. Behind them were two slightly smaller guys wearing similar attire, except they wore black vests instead of leather jackets.

Between our realization that our attire was completely wrong, rumors of fights and a general sense of uncertainty, my best friend and I decided not to even attempt to enter The Bubonic that evening. And we never went back for another try. Although it was a commercial venture, we did not get the impression The Bubonic was safe. And we were probably right. We had heard there were bouncers. But bouncers didn’t sound like security to us. Bouncers seemed like people tasked to protect the club and not the guests at the club. Besides the fights, there were almost certainly drug deals happening. Part of the so-called fun associated with The Bubonic was the sense of danger. But my best friend and I had a low tolerance for danger.

When looking at teen partying, the world has evolved significantly since the 1980s. In some ways things have gotten worse and in some ways things have gotten better. With a whole new generation of controlled substances flooding the black market, the underground teen parties have gotten much more sinister and much more dangerous. But I am finding myself very optimistic about the commercial events available to this generation of teens.

Club Avalanche is a commercial enterprise that sponsors regional teen dance parties throughout the year. The parties are held at various commercial night clubs converted for teen use during the evening in question. The bar is re-stocked with strictly non-alcoholic beverages. A professional security service trained in teen management patrols the club throughout the party and enforces the club’s zero-tolerance policies. Event dates, hours, locations, themes, dress codes and even the rules of etiquette are clearly communicated online for both parents and teens to see. Valid identification proving one is fourteen to eighteen years of age is required for entrance that also involves a search. A male security guard searches the guys and a female security guard searches the girls. No contraband gets past the doors.

As I read the parent material for Club Avalanche, I am beginning to think their events are even safer than the handful of school dances that are run by teachers and volunteer parents at Hermes High School and the other schools in the community. Although Club Avalanche ‘s admissions price is more than double what a school dance costs, I would expect a higher quality experience for the teens who attend: Better sound, better lights, an actual dance floor, adequate seating and a strict “no-in-and-out” policy enforced by trained security personnel. Additionally, their events last a full four hours compared to the two and a half hour high school dances.

Lastly, Club Avalanche has an effective marketing machine. Nothing ruins a teen event more than low attendance. Club Avalanche leverages a website, Facebook, and MySpace pages, text messaging, email and old-fashioned word-of-mouth with cool graphics and regularly updated, concise communication. Their events wind up well attended by the kind of kids who really want to dance and are happy to go somewhere new and even meet and dance with people they haven’t met before in an environment that doesn’t allure them with drugs and alcohol.

Reflecting on Teen Hookups

I was sixteen. Leona was seventeen. Leona was one of my friend Janine’s best friends. On the day I met Leona, the three of us joined around twenty-five other teens on a trip to the regional Six Flags theme park. The three of us spent the entire day together in May of my sophomore year of high school. Janine and Leona were juniors. Janine went to my school. Leona went to Janine’s old school and I had never met Leona before.

On the two hour drive to Six Flags, Janine, Leona and I shared a wide seat in one of the vans taking us to the theme park. I got to know Leona over a long animated conversation during which it became clear to me that Leona and I shared the same kind of humor that Janine particularly appreciated. Janine was laughing during almost the entire ride sandwiched in the middle of the seat between me and Leona.

As we walked into the theme park, Janine and Leona shared some private words they whispered back and forth to one another. Then at the very first theme park ride, Janine moved forward past Leona, effectively changing the seating order. The significance was not lost on me. Janine got in first, followed by Leona and I squeezed in last. I put my arm around Leona’s shoulders. She made herself comfortable leaning into my side before she looked at me and said, “I have a boyfriend. OK?”

It is possible Leona was making a weak attempt at saying no. But I interpreted her words to mean that whatever was going to happen between us that day would last only that day. And in the last remaining seconds before the first ride started, I decided to accept Leona’s terms. “That’s alright,” I replied and I squeezed her just a little tighter.

Leona and I spent the rest of the day ostentatiously close to one another under Janine’s non-judgmental eye. The closest thing we had to privacy took place in a photo booth after we ate lunch. Leona reminded me she had a boyfriend and I reiterated that I accepted that fact. And then we shared our first kiss. The kissing resumed during the ride home. We sat in the back seat of a station wagon. A parent we didn’t know was driving. Leona sat in the middle between me and Janine. Janine pretended to sleep. Leona reminded me she had a boyfriend one last time and I reiterated that I accepted that fact. We then spent the bulk of the two hour drive home slouched in one another’s arms kissing. After that day, I neither saw nor spoke to Leona again. Every once in a while I would ask Janine about Leona and Janine would merely tell me that Leona was doing fine.

Now I am the parent of a teenage boy and a somewhat soon-to-be teenage girl. I have become aware that hookups are very common among high school students. By hookups, I mean kissing or more between two people who are not in a committed relationship. Decades ago, Leona and I kept our hookup tame; we only kissed. But Philip has peers at Hermes High School who not only hook up frequently, but also sometimes do much more than kiss during their hookups. At this age, it is mainly the girls hooking up with older guys.

From my adult and parent’s perspective, I do not like teen hookups. I would like to tell Philip and Chloe that I carry a great sense of guilt over what transpired between me and Leona that day decades ago. But that would be a lie, and I do not ever lie to them. Instead, how I feel is much more complicated. I have two key regrets about how I handled relationships in general at that age. If I had handled relationships differently, my day with Leona would have played out much differently.

1. I regret that I did not apply myself to developing good relationship skills. Instead, I applied myself to developing my charm. The result was that I became very good at attracting a girlfriend (or the rare hookup like Leona). But I was not capable of sustaining my relationships or even ending them in an emotionally healthy manner. And so the ultimate outcome was a lot of avoidable heartache and fewer happy memories for both me and the teenage girls in my life at the time.

2. I regret that I did not have a clear set of rules regarding romance and intimacy. It was only when I reached college that I set my own rules for what I would permit myself to do outside a committed relationship, what I would do only within the confines of a committed relationship and what I would wait for until I was married. Once I made those rules for myself, kissing was something I did only inside the confines of a committed relationship. Today, I hope Philip and Chloe will decide to adopt rules similar to those I set for myself in college.

With the recent revelation about Erica’s hookup behavior, I find Erica’s words to Philip early in the year about her poor relationship skills quite haunting. Many teens today take the same naïve and unplanned approach relationships that I did decades ago. And many teens like Erica take my naïve approach much further. Teen hookups won’t go away and they won’t be tamed. But I don’t see teen hookups as being universal either. I know that there are also many teens among Philip’s peers who are determined to pursue their relationships in a mature and emotionally healthy manner. Such teens are willing to forego the short term pleasures of a teen romance or hookup in order to stay on course with their more long term goals and values.

Good relationship skills and a sense of direction can be developed over the course of adolescence in step with the development of charm and desire. That is the way I am raising Philip and Chloe. And I know many of my parent peers are giving similar instructions about relationships to their kids. But with the freedoms of adulthood so close on the horizon, this is not something parents can simply control. It is up to our teens to decide for themselves.

Fewer Close Kept Secrets and Less Room for Doubt

Rumors and the juvenile urge to acknowledge private matters to less than trustworthy peers has been a well-observed adolescent phenomenon. But today that phenomenon has crashed head on into one of the digital age’s commonly spoken proverbs: What happens on the internet stays on the internet.

Philip and his friend Vienna had suffered personal violation on formspring only a handful of days earlier. Philip and Vienna recovered well and they recovered quickly. Erica suffered a much greater violation—one to her personal privacy—and it is unlikely she will recover so quickly, so easily or so completely.

Initially, Erica’s peers probably paid little attention to the increasing banter on Erica’s formspring account asking her, “Is it true you are no longer a virgin?” Teenage girls get asked no shortage of rude and personal questions in this venue. The virgin question was tame by comparison. But then one day it seems that Erica caved into mounting social pressure she was getting online and offline to confirm the rumors.

“I regret it, but yeah,” was her first response to confirm the rumors. It was followed by multiple affirmative responses as if she was cleaning out a backlog of questions on her formspring queue that she had left unanswered for a while. At first one might have concluded that Erica’s older sister was playing a prank. But time proved otherwise. Erica never erased her answers. Instead on the following day, she began to answer a next wave of questions that pressed for details. It did not take much intelligence to understand the basics of what had happened.

Erica had indeed relinquished her virginity. Since this was a hookup and not a long term boyfriend, the guy had little motivation to keep Erica’s secret. He probably bragged at least to his closest friends. As the extremely popular girl, Erica would be a prize in the eyes of most high school guys who merely got the opportunity to spend a little time kissing her. Erica’s first time would be the prize of all prizes. He told some friends, at least one of them leaked the story to others and then the rumors spread like fire.

Eventually the direct questions and the ones written to her on formspring reached critical mass and Erica felt compelled to answer. Erica claims it was voluntary, even through she regrets it. As a parent, I wonder whether or not she was knowingly or unknowingly under the influence of Ecstasy or another illegal substance that would make her uncharacteristically agreeable to sex. The thought makes me cringe. That level of detail was not disclosed. So far, Erica has also resisted the many formspring questions that directly ask her with whom she shared her first time. Again I cringe at the likely scenario that it was someone much older and possibly even someone above the age for which state laws would make this a statutory rape. Erica at age fourteen was very, very young.

When I was in high school, I would catch rumors of girls relinquishing their virginity. Sometimes these rumors came with details and sometimes they did not. It was often with a much older guy. As I got older, more and more of the guys I knew would recite both vague and detailed stories of their supposed first experience, best experience or most recent experience. But the girl in question was never named to me. And no girl ever admitted or shared the details of her first experience with me. An admission like Erica’s highly public and highly authenticated admission on formspring is unique to this generation, but it is probably all of the sudden quite common.

With room for doubt only left regarding the minor details Erica still withholds, the rumors will continue while the main facts can no longer be denied. What happens on the internet stays on the internet. And what stays on the internet affects the offline world. It will no doubt affect Erica’s offline world. But what happens to Erica in the real world is a story that deserves its own post.