First date

Watch out ladies, a young Sith lord is now on the loose.

One of the biggest enjoyments about being a parent for me has been watching the different phases my children have gone through. Not all of them have been cute and fun, far from it, my son, Darth Spoilboy loved Barney the purple dinosaur deeply and wanted to see it every waking minute when he was three and four years old. Throw in Dragonwife who back then bought every Barney video she could find for her baby and I swear what little mind I can claim almost slipped away. To this day if I hear “I love you, you love me, we're a happy family ....” I go catatonic for several hours. Luckily, for me, Miss Wiggles did not like Barney and I happily watched all the videos be carted off by a slightly sour looking dad who had bought them during a yard sale several years ago with the mom and their young one singing that hideous song as they walked away. I said a prayer for that poor man that night and hoped he would feel as good as I did to pass those cursed dinosaur videos off to someone else when the time came.

Spoilboy later developed other interests such as Power Rangers and Pokemon, both only slightly less irritating than Barney but much shorter lived. Other less than fun phases involved him lifting the skirts of unsuspecting ladies, powered Nestle-Quik chocolate drink, and the saying of bad words in public. Okay I’ll accept the fault on that one since he was only repeating what daddy said around him, those little ears could have heard a mouse whisper. After each phase passed, good or bad, I did suffer from some sadness realizing that a milepost had been reached on his way to that strange land of adulthood. But the latest phase he has entered really is a wakeup call that one day he will be grown and the little fellow that followed me around with a toy mower as I cut my grass will be completely gone.

Actually it started last year as I caught him in the school playground talking with a girl during the open house that his school had at the beginning of the school year. I left Dragonwife in the classroom with a gaggle of other mothers discussing the trials and tribulations of modern life. Bored soccer and tennis moms wanting to be somewhere else, divorced moms flailing absent ex-husband , and desperate housewives juggling this meeting and one of two smaller children wanting to go catch the gold fish in the class aquarium. I was one of only a handful of fathers attending the open house and if pushed to admit it I left the classroom because some of the discussions involved how worthless men were, mainly espoused by the divorced mom group but the premise went unopposed by the other two mom groups. After slipping out I found Spoilboy talking with a young girl but left the issue alone since I knew the last people he would want to see right then would have been his mom or me. Not much came of this secret meeting, I know Spoilboy did receive a few phone calls that year in which he did not want us to hear what was being said and I do know a few were from girls. So while it was a big change for him recognizing that girls were interesting beyond the cooties you catch nothing shook the foundations of mom and dad until this weekend.

Spoilboy is now in junior high and immediately his social life took a quantum jump almost as soon as he walked into the doors. His appearance is of the utmost importance requiring cool clothing labels, and expensive deodorants that have television commercial suggesting spraying their product on will drive women mad with desire and come running up to tear your clothes off. Unfortunately, I know for a fact those commercials are blatant false advertising but I never tried the stuff, no really I haven’t I just know a friend who did. The boy who used to ignore the internet now sending instant messages to several of his friends regularly about homework, the phone is “uncool”. He has about 25 gigabytes of songs on the hard drive many I frankly can’t stand, and is trying to talk Dragonwife and myself into letting him establish a My Space page; and yes he and his friends consider Blogger uncool as well. But what really through me for a loop was a phone call I received from a dad late Friday evening asking if Spoilboy could attend a church party and a movie with a friend from his class on Saturday. The seriousness I heard in the dad's voice on the other end of the phone was strange until I asked which one of Spoilboy's friends was he talking about. I had a whole list of the usual suspects in my mind and was ready to agree to it when the dad on the phone spoke the name of his daughter, one of the girls in Spoilboy’s class this year code named Amanda. After talking with Amanda’s father on the phone further about this party and movie I could tell this was bothering him as well but he said that they never would be alone and that they would be home around 10:00pm. We both agreed to it and Amanda’s father and I laughed when we both mentioned about how we would break the news of this to the respective mom’s.

Dragonwife came into the house around thirty minutes later full of her usual fluster concerning the week at work and plans for the weekend. As best as I could with the head of steam she had going I sat her down and as calmly as I could explained that Spoilboy had been invited to a party and then a movie Saturday evening. As much as I complain about Dragonwife at times she knew there would be a twist in this news given how I had poured her a glass of ice tea and told her to take some relaxing deep breaths. When I told her that the friend he would be attending the activities with was Amanda Dragonwife’s jaw hit the floor, damn shame too with all her expensive dental work. At first she was completely against it saying he was to young but when Spoilboy came down wanting to know our decision she agreed to it when he promised to come home and give her hugs and kisses like he did as a baby. Y’all this agreement is highly classified, all sorts of preteen hell would break loose if this ever got out, but it won’t stop me from blackmailing him if he shows his ass about doing work in the yard again.

Saturday morning came and I realized Spoilboy was on the phone with Amanda a couple of times talking as the day progressed about things complete alien to my 40-something mind, Spoilboy said any explanation to such an old person as myself was beyond silly and a waste of time. And later as the time approached for him to be picked up it was easy to tell that he was being extra ordinarily serious in how he dressed and smelled. I did make him take a shower again when he asked if he had sprayed on too much of his fancy Axe deodorant. But I let it pass when I could tell he had went ahead and sprayed an even larger amount on after his second shower. Amanda and her dad came to the door not long after to pick him up and the adult chit chat among the parents left much to be desired, both her dad, Dragonwife, and myself were just a little to overwhelmed about the situation despite our statements to the opposite. Amanda and Spoilboy were clearly glad to see each other and were eager to be on the way to the party. We, Dragonwife and I, went outside to see them off and I noticed Dragonwife’s face had a little less than pleasant expression on it and asked her what was she thinking. She responded back after a few seconds that Amanda had taken her little boy and that he was too young to date. The entire time everyone involved had been avoiding the “date” word but to a great extent that is exactly what my son and Amanda are having right now. Being honest again , and a little shallow, the thing that is getting me is that my son who has not even turned twelve is on his first date, I didn’t have my first date until I was fifteen and if I wasn’t more than a little proud of Spoilboy right now that fact would bother me. God help me when I have to go through this with Miss Wiggles.