Jon Lowder

Oh the Inanity

Anyone who has or has had teenagers will learn nothing from this post.  Those of my friends who have little ones who are yet to reach teenager status, take this as a warning.  Here goes: teenagers, or at least teenagers in the middle school age range of 13-15, are as vacuous and disturbingly dense as any being on the face of the planet.  While they never, and I mean never, are at a loss for words they rarely if ever actually SAY anything.  They open their mouths and spew a series of random words that will sometimes form incomplete sentences with the word "like" interspersed between every third word, but they never, ever actually form a verbal paragraph much less a coherent story line. 

When young teenagers speak all parental ears can hear is "blah, blah, blah" until those fateful words "Can I have..." or "I want..." appear and then the parents know to prepare for the inevitable tantrum when their blathering progeny don't get what they want.  Of course that's when the kids attempt to put together a cogent argument in support of getting whatever they desire, but because the part of their brain devoted to logic has atrophied due to extended non-use they manage only to put together rambling soliloquies that cause their parents to wonder if perhaps their children are more than a little touched in the head.

I'm told this is a phase that will soon pass only to be replaced by a far more odious phase.  Older and wiser parents have informed me that while young teenagers are infuriatingly inane, they are relatively harmless.  In military terms they are fighting with broomsticks, while apparently in high school they pick up live ammo.  I believe it because it's dawning on me that these same kids that can talk for hours about some poor girl at school with that hair will be driving in less than two years.  Armed indeed, God help us.

Over My Dead Body

Recently a 40 year old teacher (now former teacher) here in North Carolina married a 16 year old student who he also coached in cross country. Here's what the story in the Winston-Salem Journal said:

Brenton Wuchae coached Windy Hager at South Brunswick High School, where she recently completed her sophomore year as one of the school's top runners. He also lives less than two miles away from the Hagers' home on Oak Island.

Wuchae married Hager in Brunswick County on Monday, according to a marriage license.

Hager's parents, Dennis and Betty Hager, said they did all they could to keep the couple apart after noticing a deeper-than-usual friendship forming between them. The parents said they tried to intervene by talking to the coach, going to school officials, pleading with police and sheriff's office detectives, even other teachers and students at South Brunswick.

But the Hagers say they reluctantly signed a consent form allowing their daughter to marry her coach.

It's often hard to criticize parents because you just don't know what it's really like for them.  We've all seen parents completely lose it on their kids over seemingly small acts of misbehavior and thought "I wonder what the kid's done before that caused this over reaction", or at least we hope it's a "straw that broke the camel's back" thing.  In this case I'm not going to necessarily criticize the parents but I am going to say that you'd have to put a pen in my cold, dead fingers and move my hand for me in order to get me to sign the consent form.  I'd rather take out a note on the house and put my daughter in a boarding school somewhere north of the arctic circle than turn her over to some middle-aged, can't handle women his own age, bum of an ex-teacher.

And of course stories like this make it oh-so-much-easier to convince my friends back in DC that I really didn't move to the location for Deliverance.

Justin Turns 11

Justin, our youngest, turns 11 today and it's kind of hard to wrap my head around the fact that he's just a step or two away from teenager status.  It's also hard to believe that he's less than a month away from ending his elementary school days, which means we as a family will be done with elementary school.  Yikes.

We actually kicked off his birthday celebration last night with a party for him and about 15 classmates at Bounce U, an indoor facility that contains lots of the blow up "moon bounce"-type slides, obstacle courses, dodge ball arenas, tug-of-war, etc. activities.  The kids spent 1 1/2 hours in the activity area and then retired to a private room for pizza, soda and cake.  Bounce U assigned two assistants (two girls from West Forsyth High School) to our party and they monitored the kids during their play time, served up all the food and drink, lit the candles on the birthday cake , led the singing of "Happy Birthday" and coordinated the gift opening for Justin.  They even made a gift list for us so we could do thank you notes afterwards.  If you're going to give a party for over a dozen 5th grade boys Bounce U offers a great place/way to do it.

What made last night particularly great was that for some reason we can't put our finger on we haven't had a "party-party" for Justin in years.  We've always seemed to end up doing a little something for him, but we haven't had a big blowout in years and, bless his heart, Justin has not once complained. Watching him go nuts with his buddies was a real thrill for me and Celeste.

Justin is a great kid, a voracious reader and possessor of a quiet and subtle wit.  Whenever we visit other homes, or go to large parties people always ask "Where's Justin" because he's so quiet and he tends to disappear into a corner so he can read his latest book of choice.  He can be the same way at home, but just as often he's the source of the most surprising comments and comedy in our household.  It seems that every day he says something that causes his parents and older siblings to say, "How does he know that?" or "Where did he learn that?"

To give you an idea of what kind of kid we're talking about I can share a couple of details from the party last night that says it all: two of the boys gave him gift cards to Barnes & Noble.  They know how much he loves to read and he was thrilled to get them since in his mind they're as good as cash.  On the other hand Justin looked just a tad uncomfortable when he was opening gifts.  He doesn't like being the focus of attention  and if he had his druthers he'd have retired to a corner to open his gifts while everyone else partied.  That's just the kind of kid he is.

Part of me is sad that we're quickly saying goodbye to the "little kid" phase of our parenthood (I know Celeste is really hating it), but the other part is really enjoying the view as our kids blossom into pre-adults.  Yeah, they drive me nuts sometimes but nights like last night really drive home how special the kids are.  If Justin is half the man that he is a boy then he's going to set the world on fire in his own quiet way, but I'm in no hurry to see it. For now I'm looking forward to enjoying his 11th year.

Happy birthday J.

Just Show Up

Most of us have heard the saying that 90% of success is just showing up sober (I'm paraphrasing here).  Personally I always equated that saying with success at work, and it never occured to me that the saying also applied to my personal life until Celeste and I attended a small event at the youngest's school last week.

All the kids in Justin's class had written some short stories and parents were invited to sit in and listen to the kids read the stories out loud on Friday afternoon.  When we arrived we found the kids divided into small groups of about five and the parents were asked to sit in with the group that included their child.  Celeste and I were the only parents in our group so we heard Justin read his story and then the four other children read theirs.  We were encouraged to ask each of the kids questions about their stories so we learned that the one girl in the group enjoys fantasy stories (i.e. pre-teen, chick-lit), one of the boys will only willingly read books about skateboarders (thus his report about Bam Margera) and the other boy was from Mississippi and had moved here after Katrina (his was an autobiographical account of his family's experience after the hurricane). With our own son we learned that he has an unbelievably strong grasp of fantasy weaponry ala Halo, and a kind of Sgt. Rock bravado in his imagery.  I for one was stunned by his ability to paint such a vivid picture of his own fantasy world, and to be honest I was shocked by his fatalistic acceptance of casualties among his troops; he fully expected people to die.

Given the trouble we've had with getting Justin to write anything even semi-expressive in his reading response journal this year it really was a surprise to hear him read a story he had written that contained so much oomph.  He's a quiet kid and not often open to sharing his thoughts and it was obvious he was embarassed reading his story out loud, so it was great to find his work to be so expressive.

The biggest surprise of the day came right before we left.  The kids wanted to show off their prowess at a multiplication game that features two teams of equal size, a teacher shouting out a multiplication question to a representative of each team and the two kids racing to see who can shout the answer first.  The kid who answers first stays in place for the next question and the other kid sits down.  The team that has someone still standing at the end wins. Justin's class is undefeated in the competition, but the shock to me was that Justin was considered one of the fastest in his class.  For two years Justin struggled to finish written multiplication tests in the alloted time and only towards the end of last year was he able to do it consistently, so for him to be one of the fastest in his school is quite an achievement.

Of course Justin told us nothing about all this.  We're lucky he gave us two days' notice about the reading and if we hadn't attended the reading we never would have known that he'd gone from struggling with multiplication to excelling at it.  In other words, by just showing up we learned something new and great about our youngest child.

Hopefully this lesson won't be forgotten, by me in particular.  I have an infamously short attention span and I'm known to spend a lot of time "in my head", but if I can remember to just show up and pay attention I might not totally screw up my kids' teenage years.  If nothing else I'm sure I'll learn exactly how much they dislike me and how big a dork they think I am. 

5,475 Days and Counting

That picture to the left is of me and Celeste 15 years ago today.  I know that it's nothing new to hear that time flies, but I don't care who you are I think you always end up reaching these milestone days and wondering how you got there so fast.  Every once in a while I do something silly like calculating how many diapers I changed over the span of about seven years (about 16,000 for the record) and it floors me when I see it. So if instead of thinking about being married for 15 years I think about it as being married for 5,475 days it knocks the wind right out of me.  But I mean that in a good way.

I'm not going to speak for Celeste, but I can tell you that I'm happier and more fulfilled now than I was 15 years ago, or even 7 years ago.  Like so many couples out there Celeste and I had moments when we weren't sure we'd get from day 2,555 to 2,556.  We had three young children, money was tight, and whatever romantic notions we had about life had been knocked out of us by the real thing.  Somehow we weathered those storms and emerged as a much stronger couple than we entered.  Now at day 5,476 I can honestly say that I can't imagine my life without her. 

And of course there are the kids.  They actually represent our first trial because we had our oldest, Michael, before we'd been married even a year.  Erin followed 13 months later and Justin rounded out the bunch just 2 1/2 years after that.  Three kids in four years will either break you or turn you into a kind of mush that you hope someday turns as hard and firm as concrete.  Luckily we went the mush route, and today we stand at the beginning of what we've been warned will be our greatest trial: teenage children.

I have confidence we'll weather this trial okay as well.  You see, Celeste is not only a magnificent woman she's an incredible mother.  She knows when to be empathetic and she knows when to be stern.  Virtually every decision is made with the kids in mind and they know it.  She's a great balance for me since I'm a "just get over it" kind of guy and I'm about as empathetic as George Patton. 

Finally there's her treatment of her fourth child, yours truly.  She's supportive when I need her to be, kicks me in the butt when I need it most, and she makes sure my world continues to spin in the right direction.  She's truly my better half, and I don't know where I'd be without her.  I do know that I couldn't be close to this happy.

As a couple you don't weather fifteen years of marriage and three kids without experiencing some, uh, changes.  So I'll end by giving you a picture of that fresh faced couple you see above after said changes.  I feel luckier than any man should be allowed, and all because Celeste chose me over 15 years ago.  Believe me, it's better to be lucky than good.

So they're Double-Ds muscle-wise?

We're having dinner last night and my daughter is telling us about a girl at school who is really muscular.  The following exchange occured:

Daughter (13 years old, seventh grade): "So, like this girl bends over to tie her shoes, and like, her muscles bulge out.  They're like, huge!  And this boy, he like looks over and like says 'Man your muscles are huge.' And the girl says, like, 'Stop it you're embarassing me'."

Youngest Son (10 years old, fifth grade): "So they're Double-Ds muscle-wise?"

Entire family (Dad-40 going on 100, Mom-Age not defined out of sheer self preservation, Brother-14, 8th grade and aforementioned sister): Moment of shocked silence followed by uproarious laughter.  Then almost simultaneously all four ask, "You know what Double-Ds are?"

Fifth grade son: Turns eight shades of red and nods his head.

Dad (now going on 120): "So what are they?"

Fifth grade son: "You know...boobs."

Fade to black for childhood, or parental, innocence.

Kids, Don't be "The Answer"

I've lately been wondering why I've always loved sports, not just playing them but also watching them. I'm not terribly enamored of professional or college sports industries, but I truly love watching the action.  Still I wonder why I, as a grown man, continue to enjoy watching boys and girls, young men and young women, play a game.  I used to assume it was because sports were one of the few places in the world where the winner was always apparent (college football being the notable exception) and where the "better man" on any given day prevailed.  I thought it was the last place in our complicated society where the simplicity of winning, the triumph of hard work combined with amazing talent, was displayed.  How naive.

Now I'm coming to believe that sports are a never ending parable.  My favorite recurring theme is that of the promising young talent who never comes to realize his potential, and of course his polar opposite in the grinder who has a base level of talent but works his ass off to realize his full potential. In the NBA the former gets the shoe contract at 22 and is out of the league at 28, and the latter plays for 10 years, never gets the shoe contract and is beloved by his teammates.  But as with many parables this is an oversimplification.

Take the example of Allen "The Answer" Iverson.  He's a remarkable talent, a scoring machine and a fearless competitor on the court.  He's also a malcontent, an inefficient shooter and a ball hog.  I'd argue that the only reason he scores 30+ points a game is that he takes an unbelievable number of shots, and that if he truly wanted to reach his full potential he'd learn how to be a point guard who leads the league in assists while averaging 20 points a game.  He's just too quick and too good a ball handler not to be a great point guard, but instead he puts on a one-on-one clinic every night, hoists 25 shots a game and leads the league in points scored and teammates-as-spectators.

Now Iverson is playing for the Denver Nuggets after wearing out his welcome in Philadelphia.  Denver already has a great scorer in Carmelo Anthony and the sports prognosticators are all wondering if the two of them can share the ball.  Hopefully they can, but the only way it will happen is if Iverson finally reaches his full potential as a basketball player.  He needs to transform himself into a true point guard.  He's still one of the quickest guys in the league and if he decided to he could put an incredible amount of pressure on any team in the league by breaking down their defense with his dribble and then distributing the ball to his open teammates. 

Thinking about Iverson reminds me of conversations I used to have with my Mom when I was in high school.  School came pretty easily to me and I could bring home an A-B report card without breaking too much of a sweat.  I was a perennial "B Honor Roll" kid and what I got from Mom was, "Should have been an A Honor Roll, and it would have been if you'd studied harder."  That was usually followed by, "Being smart isn't enough, you also have to work hard."  The rest of my life has been spent figuring out how right she was. You see I might have been considered pretty smart in high school, but in college I was average at best and my lack of a work ethic took its toll the first couple of years.  It was only when I learned to crack the books throughout the semester, not just before mid-terms and finals, that my GPA started going north of 3.0.

Now as a father I have the opportunity to see the "talent/work ethic" mix at play.  All three of my kids are very bright, all have an immense amount of talent, and all have a varying degree of work ethic.  One seems to have been born with a burning desire to achieve at the highest level and has the straight A report cards to prove it.  The other two seem to have been born with immense imaginations that have them living in an alternative universe about 50% of the time.  The only reason they don't come home with straight C report cards (or worse) is a fear of the parental wrath that would ensue.  Our straight A kid has no more "natural talent" than our other two, unless you consider an innate work ethic as a talent (it might very well be), but because she works harder she accomplishes more than her siblings at this point.

Now some might argue that measuring my kids' accomplishments by their grades isn't fair.  After all there's more to life than grades.  That's true and again I think Iverson's story provides a powerful lesson.  If school is the "game" and grades are a form of keeping score then they matter for that very reason.  But as is the case with Iverson,  how you play is as important as how much you score.

Iverson is famous for a press conference he had during a tiff he was having with his coach about practice.  He hated practicing and repeatedly pointed out that he couldn't believe he was being held accountable for missing practice.  He figured that if he showed up with his "warrior" mentality for each and every game then practice was irrelevant.  This is a pretty common argument among the talented (I'm so good I don't need to practice), but in basketball practice is the homework.  It's where you hone and perfect your teamwork and it's where you prepare for the big "test".  Talent can get you only so far, and without practice you're going to encounter a situation for which you aren't prepared and which no amount of talent will overcome.  His coach understood this and rightly insisted that Iverson practice with the rest of his team, and show up on time for that matter. Eventually Iverson's intransigence became too much for the team and they put him on the shelf until they could find someone willing to take him.

For my kids the lesson here is that while good grades are important, it's just as important how they go about getting them.  The reason that my daughter is realizing more of her potential than her brothers at this point is because she's smart and she "practices".  When my sons "practice" they invariably succeed as well as their sister, but they have to be reminded to "practice" much more often than their sister.  If and when they learn that they need to "practice" without being hounded by their parents then they'll be in great shape.  Until then I'll ride them like a rented mule, or to keep on message I'll be their version of Larry Brown.

Ho Frickin' Ho

Call me a Scrooge if you will but I've never been much of a "Yippee it's Christmas!" guy.  Not sure why that is, but it has always been the case.  Luckily for the last 15 years I've been balanced out by my wife who usually gets into the spirit about 2-3 weeks before Christmas.  That means our tree is usually begrudgingly wrestled into place by yours truly 5-8 working days before Christmas.  If I'm feeling generous I'll also do the lights and then the kids and Celeste will take care of decking it out as they listen to cheesy Christmas songs while I find something useful to do around the house, like watching a football game.

This year's been different because Celeste hasn't been infected with the spirit of the season either.  I'm not sure if it's stress from work, the unseasonably warm weather, or the lack of peace on Earth but for whatever reason it's been a very businesslike holiday season in our house, which means there hasn't been a push to get the tree up this year.  Thankfully our kids are now old enough to take matters into their own hands and the result is that my oldest, Michael, wrestled the tree into place as I was working in my office last night.  By the time I wound things up at seven I came down the stairs to find the tree up and fully decorated.

Do I feel guilty?  Heck no! I'm elated that I didn't have to do my normal back breaking, cursing routine as I tried for the 85th time to get the tree to stand up straight.  How festive is that anyway?  Now that I know that I'm not needed for the tree torture I think I might actually start looking forward to Christmas a little sooner.

Or not.  As Esbee pointed out people start getting surly around this time of year and I still have shopping to do.  Bah, humbug. 

Daddy's Not-so-little Girl

Today's the day that my little girl officially enters that frightening universe known as teenager-hood.  She turns 13 and I think she thinks she's turning 31.  We're already arguing over makeup, short-shorts, boys, you name it.  Barring the invention of a time machine I guess I'm just going to have to adjust, but some things are not changing and will never change and for that I'm thankful.

First of all she's always going to be as beautiful a creature as you can lay your eyes on.  Yeah, yeah, I'm biased (shoot me) but take my word for it.  She's also always going to stand up for herself (she's the only one of our three kids who's yelled back at me) and she's always going to be whip-smart (straight A's so far in middle school).  She will always possess a laugh that can be heard two counties away and will never be mistaken for a "polite" laugh.  She will always be a faithful friend, sister, daughter, niece, cousin and granddaughter.  You can bank on it.

And some day she'll be some lucky guy's girlfriend, fiance and eventually wife.  Hopefully those days are a long ways off, but when they come she'll still be her daddy's little girl.

Happy birthday sweetheart.

How to Know What the Hell Your Kids Are Talking About: Part 1

Okay, I finally have to admit that I'm not just behind the times, I'm way not-cool.  Increasingly I realize that I have no idea what the hell people under the age of 30 are talking about, and forget understanding what teenagers are saying.  Their language is a sea of acronyms and obscure IM and gaming references and I find myself trying to translate their words by studying the context in which they're said.  Unfortunately one of the victims of modern culture is the ability to speak or write in fully formed sentences, much less paragraphs, so it's kind of like trying to interpret what someone is saying to you over a bad mobile phone connection.  Example:

Me: What's going on?
Other: I...crack...house.
Me: You're at a crack house?
Other: No, I...itched...a crack...in...sister.
Me: You're doing what with your sister?

Later I'm told he was patching a crack in the walkway in front of his sister's house.  You get my drift.  So anyway I've been reading all these terms that I really don't get like "n00b" and "pwned" which make me say to myself, "WTF?"  So I did a little research and I came up with an essential tool for my "Parenting a Teenager Toolbox."  It's the Wikipedia page dedicated to internet slang and it's an absolute must though FWIW I suspect it's probably several steps behind the current slang.