boys
His name is Blake.
That's what my oldest daughter tells me tonight over a dinner of air-fried chicken tenders and fries, and the clementine I make sure each of the girls eat. While not generally a fan of fruit, I eat one in solidarity. And sure, for my health, too.
I finally get the name out of her after she asks if she was old enough to date. As a dad, until she’s 28, the typical answer will always be "no". But my wife - her mom - is away for the weekend, so I indulge the conversation, letting it take its own shape. It starts as a straight line, a simple tennis rally back and forth between the two of us: I ask a question, she responds, I ask another. Is he in any of your classes? Yes. Which ones? Just art. Is he good at art? Not really.
It morphs into a triangle as her younger sister joins what is now a panel interview. What's his name? You have to guess. Is it Ben? Ew, no. Is it one of the Minecraft1 bros? Gross, no. If we guess his name will you tell us? OK. Is it Michael? No. Terry? No. Daaaaadddd, you're just listing off names of characters from shows we watch. Is it Brian? No, but it starts with a B. Is it Brad? Brendan? Brandon? No, no, and no, those are just names of your boss, your brother and your friend. What's the second letter? L. Is it Blake? Yes. I admit to the girls that I was going to guess Blaze. We have a good laugh.
This admission surprises me. It's not the action she's admitting to - liking a boy while in middle school - that surprises. It's that she's telling me this, with her sister in the same room no less, with my wife away in another country that agapes my mouth.
It's rare that my oldest daughter - really either daughter - comes to me with things of a personal nature. Rare is the right word for a few reasons. First, in the typical definitional sense, rare means infrequent, borderline non-existent, and this rings true. What also tolls that same bell is the second reason and another common definition of rare, meaning of value. Rare Beanie Babies, as this same daughter has taken to collecting - yes, I realize they are listed for $10,000 on eBay, honey, but that doesn't mean anyone is buying them for that amount - hold more value than common ones. When they would buy those annoying little surprise pack toys, she would look to the paper guide to determine how rare her surprise was (it was quite rare that she'd have a rare inside). The third reason rare makes sense is a meaning of the word in the hamburger temperature which, when ordered, comes with its own level of risk.
So while it's rare - uncommon or infrequent at best - my daughter comes to me with personal items and it's rare - implying value because of the scarcity involved in that interaction - and rare in the sense that there is a degree of risk, here we are, with my daughter telling me something she has not yet told her mother. This is not to say that the personal discussions with my wife that my daughters have don't have value because of their commonality - they do - but they are safer interactions, less risky, more like a well-done burger.
But this was my moment, and I wasn't going to lose out on it by pushing too hard, or asking too many questions. It was time to dad at a higher level. And I had a spectator to boot. I bit into that rare burger, a juicy nugget of middle school that takes me back.
I decided to go with a little vial of vulnerability first. As a middle and high schooler myself, I would make fun of myself first as a way to deflect others from making fun of me on their terms, a classic defense mechanism which I still deploy to this day, albeit (which I always thought was “I'll be it”) in a sense of taking blame for things that others actually should shoulder instead of calling people out directly. I'm working on it.
As all this raced through my head, I confided it was pretty normal to start liking boys and to have boys start liking her as she progressed through middle school. Seeing the opening, she pounced.
When did you first have a girlfriend, Dad?
Sixth grade, if you could consider a girl you asked out via a handwritten note and receive a reply back via handwritten note - through a third parties - and never had a date but still bought each other Valentine's cards and gifts - a chocolate rose for her, a giant Hershey's Kiss for me that I proceeded to burn in the microwave trying to make it easier to eat after it came out of the refrigerator and yes I took the foil off - and later somehow broke up with, but remained friends, a girlfriend.
Did you kiss her?
No, as I explained we barely talked other than a few notes we exchanged.
Who was your first kiss then?
Lynn Webster. She lived two towns north and we met at a region-wide band conference - I played the alto saxophone, she played the flute. Or was it the clarinet? In either case it was 7th grade. We went to see Major League II and got into the theater as the earlier showing was ending so we already knew what was going to happen the second time around. While I left out the part where her breath smelled like corn and other details of what we did once we knew the movie outcome, I now had my daughter’s attention.
I don't think I'd kiss him. OK, maybe on the cheek.
At this point we were approaching territory that was best served for my wife to answer. I hold my breath hoping the questions cease.
Maybe we'll go on a date, like to the mall one day but mom says I'm too young to date.
I shock myself when I say that I don't think she's too young to date.
There's an 8th grade dance next year. Maybe I'd ask him. What were your school dances like?
With the relief that comes with a safer line of questions, I continue with a few stories from middle school dances before graduating to high school. Homecoming dances in the fall, junior and senior proms - two for me as my girlfriend went to a different school.
Like, did you wear a tux?
Not to homecoming, but to the senior prom, yes. Our school held it at the Aqua Turf. I leave out other not-pertinent-to-her-and-her-sister details but recall they played Prince's 1999 - the year we graduated, how original - and that my friend Mike and I somehow ended up renting the exact same tux with accompanying cravat but only I wore it to the second senior prom, too.
I also decide to leave out the parts most often experienced in middle school and high school for a time when it will be more effective: getting rejected. In high school, I deployed that earlier tactic and headed off name-calling and being-make-fun-of at the pass by dubbing my self the Rejection King. I would accumulate a crush on a girl, work up the courage to ask her out only for me to get turned down. You're a great guy, but.… Thanks for the flower(s), but.... I thought we were just friends. You'd think with all this practice, I'd be great at cold calling and walking up to strangers at events. I'm not. But I'll save this lesson for another day, when it really matters to my daughter. Instead, I continue with a few more questions.
Do you have his phone number? No, not yet, but my friend does. Are you going to ask for his number? Maybe. I ask how she knows that he likes her. A friend texted him and he said so. Or so she says.
We end the conversation there, and my daughter heads upstairs. A few moments pass and I hear laughter. She's talking loudly - boisterously, you could say - with what I believe is a friend. I realize it may be the friend she referenced a moment ago. But I realize something else. She's not on video chat with this friend. She's conducting a voice call - what we used to call phone calls - with her. It lasts 51 minutes.
I think back to my own phone calls - there was no such thing as video chat in the late '90s. I recall the rotary phone in my parents’ room. The phone book draped across my lap, I’d search the White Pages2 for the number of the latest girl I had was crushing. I'd find her last name, hoping there weren't multiple in the book, and circle the number. If she lived north of Green Hill Road, it would start 421, South, 245 - no area code was needed back then as this was a local call, though my parents wouldn’t have allowed a long-distance call anyway. Too expensive.
I'd pick up the receiver and hearing the dial tone, wind the first digit clockwise, and let it return to its at-the-moment temporary resting place. Then the second and third digits in quick succession. A brief pause, followed by the fourth, fifth, and sixth digit. My heart racing, I'd place my pointer finger in the hole for the last number - hoping it was a 9 for that additional circumferential distance - and slowly move the dial towards the metal catch on the other side. Just before making contact I'd slow to a pause, consider my next action, and push down on one of the two clear plastic button-like pieces on the receiver, disconnecting the not-yet-made call. And without the now ubiquitous Caller ID and read receipts on texts, no one would be the wiser except me, living in my own shade of embarrassment.3
And then there was the receiving end of calls. Those started in middle school, 6th grade to be specific. I remember one autumn day, I had just returned home to hear from my mom that a girl with a 245 number called. She had called on behalf of a friend. That friend had a crush on me. She was calling to tell me that on behalf of her friend. I ran up the street to tell my friends, Mike and Bob, who were hanging out in Bob's back woods in the treehouse they had built. I was equal parts proud of the call I received and too shy to do anything about it other than speak giddily about it in the security of the tall trees.
It's in this male pre-teenage awkwardess that I can appreciate Blake's situation. When my daughter comes back downstairs I ask a bit more about him. It turns out he's a lax bro which immediately fills me with images of stereotypical jocks of yesteryear - with their block-lettered college team nickname baseball hats with folded brims intentionally ripped up, usually by rubbing them against the concrete - and those of today - with their professional sports team's baseball hats with flattened brims kept pristine as the day purchased.
It also fills me with a sense of fear. Not for my daughter; she came out of the womb fighting. She lives up to the Shakespeare quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play I acted in as Demetrius as a 5th grade boy, found on a t-shirt from Old Navy we regret never buying for her when she was younger - though she be but little, she is fierce. It fills me with the fear I had as a boy and a fear I have now, that of pre-teen and teenage boys being, well, boys.
As I’ve aged, it's become harder to explain, but I've always felt threatened in a crowd of boys or men. While I can't recall a time when I was beaten up as a kid, I still fear being made fun of much as a 43-year old as I was as a 13-year old. Thirty years, nothing's changed.
On the drive to school this morning, I had to slow down to allow a group of boys - her classmates - riding their bikes four across, a single helmet among them. They weaved in and out of oncoming traffic as they slowly made their way up the hill. I made a comment I shouldn't have to my daughter and her friend about the intelligence of these boys and what would happen to that intelligence if they fell off their bikes without a helmet, how it wouldn't have much of an impact. And it all came then as a boy, and comes now as a man from a place of fear. I didn't want to pass them not just because it would be jeopardize their safety but because I couldn't stomach the thought that they would yell something insulting to me - a grown-ass man - as I drove by.
Sitting deep inside this feeling after I drop the two girls off at school, I edge towards the exit, being sure to stop at the crosswalk to allow the walkers to proceed. It's not unusual for the girls in her class to wave a thank you as I yield, but it is uncommon, some would say rare, that a boy looks me in the eye, realizes my face indicates he can walk, and then signals his gratitude. Yet this happens now.
I drive home the half mile with thoughts as I listen to some Weezer B-sides from a CDR that still plays in my Subaru despite being 25 years old (the CDR, not the Subaru). I remember buying their Blue album at Strawberries - or was it Coconuts, what was it with ‘90s record stores being named after fruit - and sitting in the parking lot of what would eventually be a Chili's Restaurant a few years later while the rain poured down and my mom went shopping at TJ Maxx.4 The car without a CD player left me an opportunity to painstakingly remove the plastic wrap around the jewel case5 - once you found the folded edge, a fingernail or a nibble would do the trick - and pulled out the album cover. I read the lyrics and looked at the gatefold showing items found In The Garage: a dungeon's master's guide, a twelve-sided die, Kitty Pryde (and Nightcrawler, too), posters on the wall of his favorite rock group KISS. There was something about waiting to get home to listen to it that seared into memory the experience; put another way, when did a first stream of a new album, or really a new song, leave any lasting memory?6
I remember getting made fun of when I told folks I bought the album. Yet I remember how cool I felt listening to Buddy Holly - I could only watch the Spike Jonze music video at a friend's house because MTV was channel 37 and our VCR, through which our cable connection came, only went up to channel 36, which was The Weather Channel, before skipping to channel 40, which was VH1 - and imagining the Happy Days homage and footage used as a front for Weezer to play for the kids of the 50s. There's an irony - I think that's what it is - in me reminiscing in 2024 about the inability to watch a music video made in 1995 using a 1970s TV show about the 1950s, but once again, here we are. The funny thing is I now own the album on vinyl, something I couldn't have bought in 1995. Only in dreams.7
I use this distraction to avoid getting to the point that as a boy I told my mom everything. I would tell her how my day was, when I was feeling sad. I would tell her my insecurities, I would tell her my concerns. I would tell her about the boys making fun of me for liking Weezer. I would cry, a lot, while telling her these things.
And now I don't tell her anything. She asked me the tonight after dinner how work was going and I gave a short but accurate response. She then asked if anything is wrong, that I'm quieter than normal. And that's true, I am quieter tonight. And usually when I'm quiet it means I want to talk. But I am also a thinker, prone to pensive periods of pondering. But tonight, part of it is tiredness and part of it is feeling like I don't have much to say about life, at least not in a way that would drive the conversation she wants to have with me. But I do have questions.
What is it about getting older that creates distances - plural - between a son and his mother? Is it leaving home that creates the first distance, the heading off to college that establishes new norms between them? Is it finding one's footing as an early careerist, trying to establish the next generation of earnings, compounding the interest of a mother's investment in her son? Is it marriage, the old adage that a son's a son until he takes a wife, coming to life creating a new dynamic, a new relationship, a new True North guiding his life? Is it the mother's retirement, with more hours of the day for her to worry again about the growth of her son, taking him, his family and his life as a sort of hobby? Is it the birth of children to the son, grandchildren to the mother, that creates another generation - a mother's life's work becoming fulfilled - that creates perhaps yet another plane of distance?
As a boy, I constantly fished for compliments. I would share my test scores, my graded assignments, and look for validation in others proactively. But if a compliment came my way without casting out the line, especially from a family member, I shrunk shy, almost embarrassed. This was especially acute when my mom would compliment me in front of her friends.
And it didn't have to be in front of her friends, and it doesn't today. When visiting my parents to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday, my mom, to no one else but me, said how proud she was of me. And I felt the pangs of discomfort, discontent, and disconnection. Discomfort rose with questions of whether I was worthy of praise. Discontent filled me, knowing I was 43 and have yet to figure out how to take a compliment. Disconnection from the relationship I had with my mom when I was a boy.
Perhaps it will work in reverse with fathers and daughters. Other than the conversations that started this piece, the relationship I have with my oldest feels like the beginning of Benjamin Button at least emotionally. When I try to give my daughter praise, she shrugs it off at worst, or saracastically replies that she already knows that. When she fishes for praise, I tend to withhold it. Perhaps this is another defense mechanism I've built up, trying to teach her to avoid asking for praise and to instead do the work, focus on the intrinsic rewards and be satisfied with oneself instead of seeking validation in others. I try as a dad to see the traits I've passed onto my daughter and avoid at all costs the propagation of negative ones, doing my best to prune the unsightly or at least unseemly bits to allow the child to grow up and out just like my wife does to our Maples and Magnolias and Cherries and Dogwoods and the Spruce and the Pine.
But as I said before, my daughter didn't tell my wife about Blake. And I don't tell my wife about it, either. I don't tell her that I thought to myself to leave the really tough parts of the conversations about boys to her. I don't tell her that our daughter told me the next day that she no longer likes Blake. I avoid the difficult conversations.
Because I'm still just a boy.
The reader may be shocked to know this was my question. While I am more out of touch than most, I still touch on a few hip things now and then.
If you’re too young to know what this is, I’m sorry.
A light red, bordering on pink, if you were curious.
I'm sure this sentence has some misplaced phrasing making you think it was raining at the Chili's Restaurant. I have confidence you'll figure it out.
To those unfamiliar with CDs, jewel cases were what they came in. Invented by Peter Doodson, he named it this for two reasons: he believed he created the “virtually perfect” way to store CDs; at certain angles, it reflected light, like a jewel. The first album sold in the US with a Jewel Case was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street in 1983.
While this is how I remember it, every photo I find of the album insert only shows his electric guitar, and a few amps, where Rivers Cuomo plays his stupid songs.
Clocking in at just under 8 minutes, this is also the title of Weezer’s greatest song.