12 posts tagged “teenagers”
Was going through the speed dial list of the cell phone son uses (note, the cell phone he uses, not owns) looking for the phone number of an aunt I needed to contact and as I scrolled through, and I see names of 2 girls, a Veronica and whoever, on the speed dial.
Ooookay, think I now understand why he's up in the morning, earlier than he has been, and anxious to get onto Facebook.
Picked up son yesterday from his other high school after his Japanese class was over. He's got the same teacher as he had last year which I thought unusual since for as long as he's been going to that school, the upper level Japanese courses have been taught by another instructor, a Japanese woman.
Get an answer during the back to school night and thought as we drove back to his home school, son might be interested in knowing why.
"Mr. L told us why he's teaching Japanese IV this year instead of Ms. T"
"Because he's getting more money for teaching Japanese IV?"
(As compared to teaching the lower levels)
"No! He told us he made a special request to the school to continue to teach your class because he enjoys being your instructor."
I guess there's a certain, odd charm in observing how simply he still views the world.
An artifact of son's last year in public school is that besides him eventually assuming the responsibility for getting himself between schools for his Japanese language classes, is that the timing for this falls in what would otherwise be his lunch break. So, right now at least, a lunch is packed here and he munches on it while I do the driving chores.
Usually its peanut butter and something sandwich, but got bored with that and since son also likes bacon- a lot (made himself his version of the Wendy's Baconator the other day) cooked a couple of strips, overlay them with mozzarella cheese and melted it, added lettuce and our home-grown Japanese cucumbers into a sandwich.
He starts munching on it but doesn't finish the sandwich as he usually does. Ask why, and am told "The meat to vegetable ratio is wrong" and that "I am not a veggie". Told him it is supposed to be a BLT sandwich, but out of respect for his pronounced dislike for tomatoes, the 'T' was omitted. Perhaps for the next sandwich, I should slather the bacon drippings on the sandwich? (Uck! That even makes me sick!)
On the up side, he's said he wants to be an engineer, and perhaps he's starting to think like one?
Mentioned in a couple of posts down how son's high school has for the 4th straight year, messed his schedule up. Today was the day it was supposed to be straightened out, but when son called this morning, he was told wait until school opens on Tuesday!!!!!!!
I swing by the school on the way home from picking up wife, talk to staff and we get the schedule more or less set, except for the room numbers. So I am told to have son come to the cafeteria first thing on Tuesday morning to get that information.
Convey this to son and suggest that I drive him to school about 20 minutes or so ahead of the bus so he can get to the cafeteria early, get business taken care of quickly and be on his way.
"Daad, I'll get to school way too early."
"Do you think you will be the only kid there who hasn't got a screwed up school schedule. Its going to be crowded and you should get in as early as you can."
"Dad, I don't have to get there early"
"And suppose you get in when you think you should get there, find long lines and wind up late for classes?"
"No big deal, lotsa kids are late for class on the first day"
At this point I freakin' give up.
With no job prospects on the horizon, I've defaulted to the option of sending son away to a small college in Ohio, which is offering 2-week Japan language, cultural program/camp.
Think I may have voiced some reservations earlier that the camp also invites Japanese high-schoolers to participate and that it all could turn out to be a 2-week babysitting/hand-holding exercise for the American kids. Still a son hasn't even thought about college visits, and this will give him a taste of a small college/small town environment and whether it suits him or whether a mega-school is more his speed. It'll also be a chance for him, if he's ambitious, to explore his roots as unbeknownst to me, this was the school my maternal grandparents graduated from.
The program is coed of course and though there are strict rules about allowing someone of the opposite sex in the dorm room. He's also going to be on his own for the very first time and while he has very good sense of what to and what not to do, but when it comes to hormones, anything could happen. So I am debating whether to slip into his things, some 'protection' and a note telling him I don't expect him to take this as lisence to go forth to soweth his wild oats, but at the same time he's also waay to young to be a father, and I don't look forward to being grandfather yet. And STD's are one of the very last things he needs to deal with too.
Its finally gotten through his teenage head that if he wants more adult play toys, like a car, he's going to need a job, even if its only part-time.
He's not had much luck yet. He's applied to a couple of places, Blockbuster and Caribou Coffee and perhaps he'll get a nibble. He applied to the store where his mother works, but they turned him down. He asked me about Dick's Sporting Goods, i.e., 'Dad, is Dicks' a good place to work?'
Good question. Told him that when viewing things broadly, yes there are companies which are thought of as good employers, like his mother's employer, large international automobile manufacturer #1, and others. But, I told him, what really makes the difference is one's direct supervisor. One could be working for angels, but if your supervisor is a shit, just an empty suit, or outright hostile, your job will not be fun. So its not really a question of whether Dick's is good/bad, but pretty much a crap shoot as to who will supervise him and hold well/poorly the person does it.
Had one of those concerned/anal parent- annoying parent (son's perspective) conversations while shuttling son between schools the other day.
He had close to $90 in his wallet; its his money, earned from odd jobs around the neighborhood. Expressed concerned that he ought not to carry that much money around in the wallet. His response was 'I know what I am doing and its not that much money, blah, blah, blah, so let's end this conversation now'.
Maybe times are different- I still think Levis and other things are expensive as my price sense is still skewered a bit by my 20+ year absence from the U.S. And its not that he needs to spend the money right away on anything. But as I told son, it'll be he who will be singing the blues should he lose his wallet at school.
Spotted this in son's high school newspaper.
Yeah, as long as there are schools, there will be dress codes; some more anal than others, but the more interesting thing is at the end of the article, about AXE products.
Asked my son about this, and he said, yes indeed, there are guys who walk around school spraying AXE cologne on themselves. Its amusing if they actually believe spraying that stuff on them will make them 'chick magnets'. But then I guess you've got to hand it to the advertizing campaign, -it works.
Tomorrow, son turns 18. I know its a tired, smarmy cliché, but it does not seem that long ago that I was in my car at 04:30 in the morning, trying to get to the 産科婦人病院 before he came out into this world- a month early. I was about a half an hour too late. Looking at him now, you'd never believe he came in at only 2300+ grams and spent a week in an incubator.
Many things change from tomorrow, like;
· We will have to change the custodial savings accounts we opened for him way back to his name -it will be his money now (Yikes!),
· He can get his full driving license: which will be done on Monday,
· His high school grades and any other school--related mailings will no longer be addressed to 'The Parents/Guardians of..' but to him. We're still going to open up the mailings that has his grades though,
· He'll start being bombarded with credit card offers, and with that in mind, he's going the call the credit bureaus to put an alert up on his information so some identity-theft slime ball can't wreck his credit rating before he gets off the ground. He's not getting a credit card though, unless he has a job, for I certainly can't/won't pay such bills,
· What goes on between his physician and he, even if he has typhoid, will be between he and his physician,
· He can vote,
· He can enlist in the military if he chooses to,
· Most importantly however, he's going to have to step up to the plate and make more decisions for himself, like which tutor he wants to use for SAT test prep. I'll always be happy to provide my advice, but despite what his mother thinks about his level of maturity, I cannot and should not be making these sorts of decisions for him now.
He likes steak and after the wife gets off from work tomorrow, the plan is to go out and treat him to one to mark the occasion. Guess children are different now (an age-old observation) but when from about age 16 or so, whenever I or my younger brother had a B'day, my father would have us dress up in a suit and take us to a nice restaurant for a celebratory dinner. Junior doesn't have a suit and right now has no interest in owning one.
Son has thrown a teenage snit, muttered darkly about erasing programs, and hacking into my profile, but I have not removed the time restrictions on his PC profile and will not as I have told him, until he shows me he does not need to be in front of a PC for hours at a time.
So, in the next escalation step, and while he was on my profile, he figured out how to invert the screen display, which may lead you to wonder how am I typing this? It's being done with the screen turned upside down.
Got to hand it to him, he is imaginative, but he's also going to put this display right when he comes down this morning.
