Surviving the senior
IWONDER IF there is some kind of post-traumatic stress treatment center for parents who survive senior year. A place with mud baths, hot baths, soapy baths, steam baths, all kinds of baths to wash away the bloodbath. With wise, nonjudgmental people to cloak you in thick, white robes and offer loving arms, or at least a keening room where you can gnash your teeth and weep, or better yet, comedians, fabulous ones, because laughter -- what is that? And martinis, please.
Our particular bloodbath began the first day of school last August, but I had no clue it would set the tone for the entire year. After 10 minutes of listening to running water ... 15, 16, 17 ... it was time for action. I burst into the bathroom as the senior turned off the shower, and I screamed at him to get into the car because he was going to make his sister, a freshman, late. He looked me square in the face and said, expletives deleted: “You need to calm down and let me put on my clothes.”
He did make her late that day and for many days, so many days that she is dangerously close to being considered truant as the school year ends. Too late I learned to leave him to walk or ride his bike to school. One wet day, he sighed, “I had to walk in the rain and do my econ homework with the bums at a church.” I replied, “Sounds like a short story to me.”
For our senior, there were 11 college applications, which broke down into three rejections, four wait-lists, four acceptances. He picked UC Santa Barbara, where classes don’t start until Sept. 28, which feels numbingly far away. He won’t go to the “Summer Start” program in early August because: “I want to enjoy my last few months of freedom, and besides, I have a record deal to get this summer.”
He also has to send his grades to UC Santa Barbara for a final verdict, after graduation Wednesday. Gone are the good old days of frittering away the last semester of senior year. Now, even after a letter of acceptance, kids can be “uninvited” -- the mournful refrain of his counselor all year.
Me: “Do you think you’re better and more entitled than everyone else in class and so you can turn in work whenever it’s convenient?”
Senior: “Where did you hide my X-Box controllers?”
Me: “Can’t you see that it is perceived that way?”
Senior: “Just promise me they’re not in a place where they’ll melt.”
Me: “Do you think you get to make up your own rules?”
Senior: “You can’t arbitrarily take my stuff away like I’m a child. I’m 17 years old. Why can’t I make decisions for myself without you guys freaking out.”
Me: “You have no idea how hard you made this year.”
Senior: “You have no idea how much harder I could have made it.”
Me: “So I’m supposed to thank you?”
Senior: “I might do a gap year.”
Me: “And do what?”
Senior: “Get famous.”
L.A. Unified’s Track A winter break lasted 10 years, from Dec. 21 to March 8. Or maybe a hundred. Whenever we’d pull in the driveway, reedy teens with Rolling Stones’ haircuts would appear like alley cats from the shadows to greet our senior. It didn’t matter if it was Monday or Saturday night, whether it was 5 p.m. or midnight. They were there without fail, on foot, bike, skateboard. “Hey, what’s up, man?” Translation: Do you want to hang out for the next 12 hours? “Wanna come out and play?” Translation: “Wanna smoke a bowl?”
We sent the senior to Europe on a class trip. Spain, Italy and France have eluded us so far, but we wanted him to see the world. It was either that or insure him as a teenage California driver.
His sister, a photographer, agreed to let him take her digital camera. He took one picture and left the camera on the plane. He couldn’t have lost it any faster if he’d flung it from the window on the way to the airport. While on the tour, he and a friend bought leopard-skin underwear in Italy, and the boys modeled it for the rest of the tour, or so the story goes.
He disappeared in Madrid for 24 hours after he hooked up with my brother, a flamenco dancer, 42 going on 24, who lives there. I found out when my brother called at the crack of dawn and said, “Everything is fine, but we can’t find the tour, and we need the director’s cell number.”
But our boy ended up with stories to tell: “I ran eight miles through Paris, by Notre Dame and the opera house. It started to snow! I look like Louis XIV!” As for his sister’s digital camera, he worked as a baby-sitter until he was able to purchase a new one for her.
I guess the most depressing, soul-sucking thing about this rollercoaster year has been dreaming up punishments to inflict as we play the heavy. After grounding him, hiding the X-Box and tearing up the Magic cards (think Pokemon meets Dungeons & Dragons), we’re fresh out of tricks and full of self-loathing.
But I read somewhere that to stomach your teenage offspring, you’re supposed to imagine them as babies again, which means ignoring the swamp bathroom, waiting up all night (while he doesn’t answer the cellphone), driving a minivan that feels like a giant pinball machine because of rolling bottles, cans, coffee cups, spoons and cereal bowls from breakfast-on-the-go.
When our son was a baby, I read him “Where the Wild Things Are” over and over again. He went wild with joy at the wild rumpus dance -- stomping, laughing, wriggling. It was by far our favorite story, and we must have read it hundreds of times throughout his childhood.
Recently, I finished writing a children’s novel with a blind character and was visiting the Frances Blend School for the Blind in Hollywood to do research and read to the kids. So instead of punishing the senior for his latest offenses, I told him he was going with me to read to these amazing kids.
He didn’t argue.
We went on a morning when the seniors had the day off because of testing. I gave him a stack of books, among them “Where the Wild Things Are.” He read “George and Martha” stories, “Frog & Toad,” “The Carrot Seed,” “A Tree Named Steve.” But he threw himself into “Where the Wild Things Are,” and the kids went wild with joy. He read the story the way we used to when he was little, and he had the class of 6-year-olds stomping their feet, clapping their hands, throwing their arms in the air. They all danced the wild rumpus with the senior.
A handsome little boy, Jet, came up and put his arms around him and said, “I love you. I love you!” The senior hugged Jet back and said, “I love you too!”
Later that night, his sister, the freshman, said to me, “He got chick points today because of you,” and I said, “What does that mean?” She rolled her eyes. “He got chick points for reading to blind kids. He told some girls. They were so impressed and wanted to hear all about it.”
I sighed. Chick points. Blind kids. Bloodbaths. Senior year. “Let the wild rumpus begin!”