Post #251

Michael pedaled his way to junior high today. His first day. He was excited, decidedly un-nervous, and I thought about plucking a hair for DNA, veiled by a familiar kiss on top of his head, a nonchalant affection-practice I subject him to frequently, which he doesn't seem to mind, even though he's a dude and seemingly six feet tall now, and there's my awareness – and still vivid memory – that junior-high means horror at anything uncool, and public preening by one's father is quite possibly the very definition of uncool. But Michael's not hyper-vigilant about coolness yet, sartorially for sure, except regarding shoes; he likes shoes that cost slightly less than plane tickets to places warm and foreign. Otherwise, it's mesh shorts and some kind of clashing upper-wear, and he's off to kick the day's ass with a smile. Unless he's loaf-y and lollygag-y, a disposition he sags into sometimes when there's labor to be done, and then I suppress urges to berate him, and instead toss razors of condescending sarcasm. Hey, my dad was harder on me, and every generation previous a step backwards down a kind of staircase of parental nastiness – if you take their word for it – at the depths of which, the beginning and the bottom, there was discipline by caveman club or abandonment in the wild. Or something. It seems every generation before had it rougher. I know my mom, when younger than Megan, did heaps of laundry everyday and looked after infant and toddler siblings, and my dad cut the lawn – with scissors, he'll tell you, if there was penance to pay for the slightest mouth-off or oversight – when younger than Michael. Now, kids are exasperated whenever our modern-day, American fire hose of amazing, exorbitant materialism is shut off for even a second. Nevermind arguments about diminishing responsibilities at home. Although, really, it's not that bad; it's just different. In fact, it's better! But it's more difficult for me every year to conceive of this 'Greatest Generation' bygone era stuff I bring up for comedic, dramatic comparison. In other words, the life my ancestors must've lived as children – and then as the parents of children – is officially more fantasy, in my mind, than Game Of Thrones.