Parenteen

I'm trying desperately to escape the smothering, gooey, coax-and-coddle parenting so popular with my generation but I just can't...overcome...gravity... And so tonight I found myself doing something my parents would NEVER have done. Try to imagine it--my mother, 10 pm on a school night, hunched over the computer anxiously helping type up reams of "Campbell for Secretary" stickers. Dad helpfully coming home early from work to brainstorm campaign strategy. Yeah.

Anyway. Tom is helping Zach write a speech. I am helping him design a poster. Tom and Zach have invented a slogan. I put the slogan on a poster-sized sticker (yes, they really have these. Fred Meyer. Quick stop on the way home from Cub Scouts/Activity Days/Primary Presidency Meeting.) Now the slogan has been supersized and put in a slogan-appropriate font, Zach is trying hard to hide his consternation. I see it dawning. Mom and Dad have seemed a little less smart lately, but suddenly he KNOWS it. He really, really KNOWS it. If they ever had to survive a day in the halls of middle school, they would be teased. Humiliated. They would eat their lunch in the library. They have NO IDEA HOW TO SURVIVE. And if he takes their slogans and spiffy ideas anywhere near Shuksan Middle School, he will be ANNIHILATED.

He's backpedaling, pretty graciously for a seventh grade boy. He's offering his suggestions while trying to defer without giving in to the parental ideas. *Sigh.* Who knew this campaign was going to be so hard. But he's definitely showing his political savvy. Go Zach.

I realize two things, as I tenderly tuck my seventh grade boy into bed and quietly toss the darling "Zach's Got Your Back/Mumford for Secretary" half sheet stickers with black and white line-drawn head shot (seemed like a good idea at the time...really) into the garbage.

Number one is that by the time you get a teenager to parent, you're forty or pretty close. You've lost it, if you ever had it. You're tone deaf to the language of thirteen year olds. You are not cool--or you probably are because *cool* is not cool. You need to let your teenager handle his own campaign.

Number two is that if I had to walk in the doors of Lincoln Middle School again tomorrow, I'd be just as miserable as I was the first time around. I have learned very little in life that would make me better at middle school. Thank goodness.

May I be graceful enough to keep my mouth shut, remember where the trash can is, and have faith that Zach will do better all by his little lonesome self than he ever will with two meddlesome forty year olds running along behind plying him with pathetic slogans that probably would not have elected anyone even in the 80s.