Help!  My Teenage Son Is Turning Into A Human!

By Dick McCullough

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Officially, our son, Paul, became a teenager on March 12, 1995.  But at 13, he was still a sweet, innocent, trusting and naively honest little boy.  A gorgeous, utterly lovable little human being.  In my family, everybody is a late bloomer.

No, in Paul’s case, he became a teenage extremist, on Thursday, March 12, 1998.  Black Thursday, we call it.  The day the state of California made the ludicrous decision to award him a driver’s license.  Not to be outdone by the sterile idiocy of some anonymous bureaucrat, his mother and I decided to help him buy a car.

Before you call NIMH, understand our reasoning.  We thought that, if he had his own car, he would gladly taxi his younger siblings all over town just for the opportunity to drive his precious vehicle, thus saving us from many time-consuming errands.  You may now call NIMH.

We should have known.  Although precious at 13, by 15 he was already beginning to display the classic symptoms of apathy, intolerance and omniscience common to those infected with Teenage Virus.  The righteous indignation of the outraged victim came a little later.

It seems that driver’s license was just the tonic he needed to develop a full-blown case of TV.  He became angry at the slightest infringement on his holy rights of independence.  “We really think you should be home before 4 am, you have school tomorrow.  OK?”  Whimper, whimper, grovel.  “What!  That’s so stupid!  You don’t make any sense!”  Stomp out of the room.

He played music, loud, late into the night.  His grades declined steadily from freshman year to senior.  He apparently felt senior year was his rest period before college.

When he was 13, I was worried that I would be permanently depressed when he left for college.  When he was 16, I was worried he wouldn’t be admitted to college.  And at 17, I was terrified he would decide not to go to college, even if some school was misguided enough to accept him.

My prayers were answered, however, and off he went.  Or, more accurately, off I pushed.  Rather than depression, I found that I had an overpowering urge to drink champagne.  The next time a hockey player hoists the Stanley Cup over his head, I will know just how he feels.

Paul had fallen into, for him, the perfect school.  I shouldn’t say he fell into such a school.  For once in his life, he demonstrated initiative.  He researched potential campuses very carefully.  He only applied at schools that were close to good surfing.  It wasn’t enough that they be on the coast, the quality of the surf had to be of a certain standard.  His university town was recently rated a top 10 surf city by a national surfing magazine, which described it as the best kept secret in surfing.  If he could only apply such meticulous analysis to his schoolwork, he would…Naw, why torture myself with fantasies.  I just get depressed.

Paul settled in to his dorm.  We helped him move in.  Great roommate, great dorm, great town, great surf.  He was excited.  He immediately went on academic probation, also known as AP.

The thrill of the Stanley Cup quickly faded.  It was replaced with the aching in my stomach that said “He’s gonna flunk out and come home.”  I started to wake up nights in a sweat.  The stress was killing me.

I prayed to Saint Patrick of Roy, the patron saint of goalies and other hopeless causes, for a miracle.  Saint Patrick heard me.  Paul liked college life.  Turns out, entirely by coincidence, that there are girls in college.  That seemed to catch him off guard.  But he was pleased.

Also, there are other surfers.  There is ample time to surf, especially if you just ignore that silly stuff called homework.  Even time to spend with girls after you’re done spending a hard day at the beach.  Paul found a clever way to use his time more efficiently: he didn’t go to class.  That freed up even more time for all the good stuff there was to do.

But AP was proving problematic.  I, playing the role of the heartless and unspeakably cruel, satanic father, had made it quite clear, even to this foggy-brained teenager, that flunking out would result in a dramatic decrease in parentally-sponsored social welfare.  Thus, Paul, for the first time in his brief, all knowing teenage life, made a causal connection: “If I flunk out of school, I won’t be able to live here, surf here, chase girls here.”  Hmmm.  This caused him a moment of pause.

His grades improved remarkably.  A nation was stunned.  I got a phone call from him after his third quarter grades had arrived.  He told me, quite sincerely (he never did lose that naïve honesty), that he had discovered attending lecture really made taking the tests a lot easier.  I hung up the phone, sat back in my chair and stared blankly at the opposite wall.  It took him to the third quarter of his freshman year in college coupled with the very real threat of losing the most enjoyable lifestyle on the planet to drive him to the conclusion that attending class was a good idea.  That’s my boy.  I’m so proud.

When he came home for Christmas break his sophomore year, something catastrophic happened.  His grades had stabilized (that’s not the catastrophe).  Actually, they had become quite respectable.  He had ironed out his problems with his roommates.  They had had the both foreign and absurd notion that Paul should help with the household chores and in a timely manner, to boot.  Paul can set the curve in a physics final without studying but it took him several weeks of anguished ruminating to figure out this chore thing.

Paul had found a wonderful young lady to be his girlfriend.  What attracts these pretty, intelligent, personable young women to teenage males?  I’m amazed that she would even talk to him.  And she actually seems to like him.  Now that’s a miracle.  Thank you, again, Saint Patrick.

So life was looking pretty good, from my perspective.  Paul had truly settled in.  He was taking care of business in the classroom and enjoying college life outside the classroom.  I was content.

Until he came home for Christmas.  The Catastrophe.

He came home a changed man (coming home any kind of man would have been a change).  He was polite.  He was agreeable.  He was pleasant.  Dare I say it?  He was downright accommodating.  I was so disoriented I had to sit down.  My wife started staring at me with worry lines etched across her brow.

It got worse.  On Christmas Day, he actually had presents for each of us.  I’m starting to tear up, just writing this.  The presents, although you will probably not believe this as it goes too far to be credible, were thoughtful.

His sister, for example, wanted a Joey Lawrence music CD.  Sometime in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Joey Lawrence cut a couple CD’s.  As you might expect, they did not go platinum.  They are no longer sold in stores (if they ever were).  They are impossible, with very good reason, to find.

Oh, the agony.  My only hope is maybe his girlfriend did it.

His mother asked him to do her a favor and he said yes!  I started feeling queasy.  My world was falling apart.

The coup de grace was The Hockey Game.  Paul and I, when he was younger and actually human, attended many, many hockey games together.  What supreme joy it is take your young son to a hockey game, holding his tiny hand in yours as you walk from the parking lot to the arena.  Having him look up at you with those beautiful, adoring, innocent eyes and ask you a question, knowing without a doubt in the world that you will have the answer.

Paul, the teenager, and I went to a hockey game that Christmas vacation.  He didn’t hold my hand in the parking lot, he didn’t look up at me and ask a question (he would have had to walk on his knees to look up at me now).  We walked side by side to the arena.  We talked comfortably about the teams and players we were about to watch.  We traded opinions without bloodshed.  We chatted pleasantly throughout the game.  He was simply charming.  And I fell in love.  I fell in love for the very first time with Paul, the man.  Head over heels, irretrievably in love with an utterly decent human being.

And then we drove home, he packed his bags and returned to school.

I was undone.

Teenage Virus is nature’s way of getting parents to let go.  Couldn’t he have stayed sick just a little longer?

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