Well, it does. But because I’m pretty sure the kids he hangs out with know how to use Google (even if it is just to search for manga, Star Wars or boobs), this is how I can sum up what raising a teenager is like:

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High school is tricky and it would have been cool had someone told me that, you know? His grades are seriously great and so far improved over last year, thee are times I can’t believe it. He has some pretty cool friends. He’s so smart. He’s developing into this guy that’s fun to hang out with and I forget I’m supposed to be helping raise.

With high school comes social stuff and awkward growing and dating and homework and all this other stuff that I super loved in high school (minus the dating), so it’s cool to see him deal with all of it in his own way that just works best for him. And man, oh, man, do I want to blog about ALL OF IT.

But I don’t, because that is so not cool.

Okay, first off – I’m not saying I go above and beyond for this kid and should be rewarded for it. I do what parents do and that’s my job. So don’t get crazy.

Secondly, the point. The Kid has had an interest in manga, this Japanese comic book type thingy, and has been reading them (parent-approved, of course) over the past several years, even before I met him. I took him to Dollar Tree for some ridiculous reason a couple of weeks ago and we started trolling through the book section. I told him he could get one book, mainly since I was buying one. He found Rock and Roll Love, which I let him buy. It was a dollar. If The General, who was at home, wouldn’t approve of it, we could have pitched it and/or set it on fire.

I’ve been reading my Dollar Tree purchase, Don’t Let The Lipstick Fool You, which is Lisa Leslie’s autobiography but I didn’t feel like it last night. I figured I’d try to pick up some of this Rock and Roll Love nonsense and see if maybe it’s something we could have in common. Well, sorry, little guy, we do not.

Manga is kind of the dumbest thing I’ve ever read in my life. Now, granted this book was for kids 10 and up, but holy cow. I read probably 30 pages of it thinking just MAYBE I’d be able to get into it and the only thing I got into was a ball of rage for continuing to look at this book full of pictures of people that all looked the same.

Now, this morning, I’m complaining about it to his mom. And she tells me that the only reason he’s reading it is because his new girlfriend (YES, GIRLFRIEND) likes manga. It takes a lot off my shoulders to realize he’s reading crap for someone else and now I don’t have to read it, too.

It’s usually night like tonight, too.

Drive home from work where The Boy and I yammer away about homework, cleaning his room, a kid at school that’s kind of a jerk, and Minneapolis city curfews. The Boy does his math homework while we run to the store for paper towels, a prescription, and a winter scarf Riley can wear to his first visit to Santa on Saturday.

The three of us stand around in the kitchen. Well, The General cooks, I open things and taste test new recipes. The Boy, in his attempt at talking his way out of cleanup duty, tried to say he helped with dinner prep by “providing conversation”.

Dinner at the table, discussions about hot sauce and what size shoe The Boy’s dad wears. Then it’s off to bathe for The Kid and some program watching for the adults.

Now I’m in bed with little Thelma. The Kid has a Panic at the Disco CD on repeat while he sleeps. And The General and Riley are closing up shop downstairs before coming up to bed.

Nights like this have become my life and I don’t have a complaint in the world about it.

And if someone types Mrs. Piatt and coldcock into Google and finds this site, all my lifelong dreams will come true.

More to the point, had I ever called my 11th and 12th grade math teacher (Mrs. Piatt) by her first name, I can almost guarantee you should have thrown that overhead project in my general direction. She got mad enough when I tried to lie to her and tell her I didn’t have a middle name, so I can’t imagine what would have happened had I taken the liberty of calling her Linda. I don’t even think my 10th grade English teacher had a first name. Rumor around school was that she was reincarnated from a horse, or so she believed, so she probably didn’t need a first name.

The Kid and I were on the way home today and he started talking about school. I asked him who his favorite teachers were. He responded with Justin and Shane (not their real names) and I was like, “Wait, what?” And then I remembered that it’s 2011 and kids call their teachers by their first names! He did it last year, too. He called all of his teachers by their first name (at their request) with the exception of his hateful arts teacher and the two male teachers he had. Turns out, he’s been calling his teachers by their first name since first grade.

Is this the thing now? I mean, I have friends that are teachers, but they’re Mrs. This or Ms. That. Even my bestie from back in the day, who ended marrying into the last name Dick, had her students call her by her last name. Is it a big city thing? Newer teachers trying to be more liberal and friendly? What the heck is that all about?

Kid’s assessment of his new school went like this:

• The meat on the sandwich was too dry, and they had chocolate milk and only chocolate milk” AND “They have a microwave we can use, so I could totally take ramen.
• Some of the classrooms have more than one door, so it makes it confusing. There are bookcases against some of the doors. They are not magical bookcases, and you’re damn right I asked if they were.
• No homework today.
• His dad bought him the shirt that his mom and I refused to buy him. We only refused because it was a white t-shirt and, HI, HE’S A 14 YEAR OLD BOY. We lose the parents of the year award; he was very happy to wear this damn shirt that he said he wanted to wear on the first day really bad and he got “like 20 compliments”. So, WIN for Dad.
• He was asked to buy drugs so many times today he lost count. He only said yes twice; once was some grass in a ziploc bag and the other one was a bag full of rocks. (This is him being a little bit of a smart ass.)

I think that means it’s a good first day.

We went to the Minnesota Lynx game Friday night and The Kid got to take part in some pregame rituals, including the above picture. Maya Moore (you know, the first female basketball player to ever sign with Jordan’s brand, a four-time All-American, and the number one draft pick in 2011) greeted him at half court giving him a WNBA basketball and a pat on the back. His mom and I were screaming schoolgirls. He tried to play it cool, but he was up until after midnight that night carrying around the basketball and singing songs from Space Jam.

This picture is totally getting printed and framed in our house, both because it’s a fantastic picture (if I do say so myself) and because it’s one of those things that you hope your kid won’t ever forget, you know?

We picked The Boy up Friday night from an overnight Spanish language camp he went to with his school. When we picked him up, he was wound up like you wouldn’t believe. I’d probably guess it was a combination of being away from home, getting sugared up and hanging out in a dorm room for 36 hours with a bunch of boys his age.

I was all excited to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant to celebrate his camp, but the first thing he said when he got in the car: If I never have to see any kind of Spanish food again, I’ll be so happy. So scratch that idea. We gave him a choice for dinner. He chose Old Country Buffet (aka ‘The Trough’) and you know what the first thing he put on his plate was? A taco salad. Seriously.

After his fourth plate of jello and popcorn shrimp, he had a breadstick on his plate that The General really wanted. Instead of just handing it over, he made The General ask for it politely. In Spanish. Pass the bread, please. That’s all we had to say to get the bread. In case you’re curious, it’s “pasar el pan, por favor”. We didn’t find that out until The Boy had eaten half the breadstick.

Later in the weekend, The General and I were killing some time in the car, when I made an attempt to put together my own Spanish sentence using the words I’d learned at dinner the night before. The only thing I could come up with was: “Pase las chichis dulces, por favor.” Loosely translated using my Spanish vocabulary, it means “Pass the sweet tits, please!”

I figure it’s at least something Mel Gibson would be proud of.

This is a perfectly normally conversation at our house.

I heard really weird noises from the living room. Knowing that The Kid is the only one in there, I yell from the bedroom, “What are you doing?”

He answers: “Trying to make a duck noise.”

Me: “Okay.”

Because how else would you answer that, you know?

The Kid and I (after he woke up at 1pm and I got rid of my monster migraine) decided to do some light bike maintenance today. Now that it’s not 500 degrees outside, we could both use a little outside time. The bike maintenance included me holding the bikes while he aired up the towers and sprayed WD-40 on everything that moved. Including himself, I’m pretty sure. He seems to be pretty handy with the WD-40, much like Can Hand:

Yes, I googled WD-40 videos. Only because I know The Kid and after 2.5 years, I’m starting to know how his mind works. When you tell him he’s good at something, he likes to make sure he’s great at it. I don’t need him going door to door asking the neighbors we’ve never met if they need anything greased up with the tiny travel sized can of WD-40 we have.

We also tried using it to spray on the house, since the sprayer thing has been on there since we moved in 1.5 years ago. Neither one of us could make it move, despite our multiple announcements of “right tighty, lefty loosey”. There weren’t any WD-40 videos showing that as an option, but I also don’t know that even the powers of that magical liquid in a can would be able to pry about what’s likely two winters worth of rust. In the meantime, the sprayer that’s on it is broken into a good 42 pieces, which means there was some creative hose-handling skills involved when we were trying to wash off his bike that’s been in the garage ever since we moved in.

You know what happens when you leave a kid’s dirt bike in a garage for that long? You have spider webs that you have to cut in half with gardening shears. That may have been along the lines of overkill, but like I said, I know this kid. He’s not going to get anywhere near a spider.

Along with having a 13 year old kid milling about on a pretty regular basis comes the grounds of learning things that I never really have cared about. Things like the different characters that play the doctor in Dr. Who and what video game platform the next version of Kingdom Hearts is coming out on later this year are some of the things I get to hear about and a couple of the things that just go in one ear and out the other.

Don’t get me wrong. The Kid? He’s not boring at all. He’s an entertaining guy! And I feel pretty lucky to have a Bonus Kid that’s into video games and sci-fi shows as opposed to things like which Jonas Brother is dating which girl from the Mickey Mouse Club and which Anna blue song is the best one.

This is a kid whose ringtones are songs by Cobra Starship or Paramore, which are honest to goodness grownup bands, I think. The only Cobra Starship song I know is called Good Girls Gone Bad and I’m so not comfortable with having that on my phone at The Kid’s ringtone. Instead, I just have Michael Jackson’s PYT, which is probably equally as uncomfortable and not okay. But who doesn’t love a little Michael Jackson in the middle of the day when the person on the other end of the phone is calling because he can’t find the scissors to open his ramen?