#321

It's 40 degrees this morning and Michael wore shorts to school. I didn't stop him. I said if I shined a flashlight in his ear, light would come out his other ear, but I didn't make him change. Lots to discuss here, namely:

1) Am I a shitty parent?

2) Has Michael lost his mind?

3) Do teenage boys have minds to begin with?

3) Is my son oblivious to the world around him? Heedless of freezing temperatures and the perceptions of others – like teachers and normal people – that he's a dumbass or, worse, an unparented dumbass?

4) Is he trying to be cool? (Great pun in this situation.) Maybe the in-thing for junior-high boys is to reject jackets, act tough, chatter teeth, be like SEALs in surf torture (that's the cold water / hypothermia training they do that must be really, really miserable). I know certain boys 'love' spicy food and regard it as a measure of toughness. Sure, but I don't feel untough when I use ketchup instead of habanero hellfire burn-your-face-off death sauce.

They say the adolescent male mind is like a car without brakes. It's missing important shit. Awesome. It's not fully-formed, rounded, balanced, tested. It's lousy at impulse resistance and self control. Young men are crappy at postponing pleasure, delaying gratification, calculating consequences. You get it. Bodily developments can outpace mental developments that really should accompany the physical changes, but oh well. At least young men do, in fact, have minds, and they aren't easily lost or missing even. So Michael has a mind, it's just fucked up right now, which is standard. I realize these things makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, but not a modern one whatsoever. We live in a funny universe. I'm pretty certain it's created, and not random or accidental, but whenever I'm struck by the incredible precision of its physical structure, shortly thereafter I'm struck by the unbounded chaos of pieces like consciousness and culture. I don't wish, however, for Michael to be as predictable as gravity. That would be boring as shit, frankly. Consistency, yes, but constancy in all things would seem to nullify personalities, histories, and life itself.

Every dude should get a lot of sympathy because of what we go through when we're young. With our half-baked brains.

Sophie told me today that beards are 'dude makeup.' I'm wearing a lot of dude makeup right now.