13 Is the New 18 (2 page)

Meditations on the Past and Future

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dear Reader,

If your child has already turned eight, nine, or ten, then you've long been done with diapers, bottles, and sippy cups, toilet training and tantrums. By now your child can read and multiply, swim and ride a two- wheeler, and manage OK without you in most everyday tasks.

The highlights of your child's life are simple, but wonderful in their simplicity: scoring a goal in soccer. Staying up late on a sleepover. Being tall enough to ride a big roller coaster. Seeing a movie the day it opens. Pigging out on Halloween candy. Winning at Monopoly. Blowing a perfect bubble with a piece of gum.

And while it's only recently that your child has stopped believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, he's young enough that deep down inside, he still holds on to a shred of hope that they might actually be real. He just doesn't want to admit it.

Enjoy this time, dear reader. Because soon your golden child will turn eleven, twelve … and then
thirteen. And then one day, all of a sudden, none of those things that used to make him happy will matter.

He will grow tall in the night and nothing will fit in the morning. Strange smells will emanate from his shoes, his body, and his room. He will get in trouble and people will blame you. He will admire celebrities who scare you. You will find yourself screaming things your mother screamed at you, and he will tune you out with ear buds and tiny glowing screens. You've been dreaming of the day, ever since he was born, that he would allow you to sleep past dawn, but now it will take a bagpipe band to rouse him before lunch.

He will have nothing but disdain for Santa and the Tooth Fairy, but he will believe that you are obligated to provide presents and money whenever he asks, and he will be outraged when you say no. He will spend huge sums of cash on things you don't understand, like texting and downloading music, and if you should ever read those text messages or hear those songs, you will want to kill yourself. And his sneakers will cost more than your first semester of college.

He may also do dangerous things, stupid things, and possibly even illegal things. And even if he isn't doing them, you will drive yourself insane wondering if he is. He will abhor the sound of your voice, the sight of your face, and the ways of your family, which used to be his family, before he decided to pretend that he is no longer related to you. From now on, in fact, he will do everything
he can to avoid you, including gluing his cell phone to his ear, but not answering it when you call.

Perhaps you think of yourself as someone who has kept up with trends, who is not out of touch despite the fact that you were born sometime in the last century and now spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to hide that roll of fat around your waist and your gray hair (or lack of hair).

Your own parents probably grew up during the Great Depression or World War II, so it was no surprise that there was a generation gap when you were a teenager. But you never anticipated you would have a generation gap with your own child.

After all, you listened to music with degenerate lyrics! You drank before you were legally old enough! Maybe you even smoked pot and had what is almost never referred to these days as premarital sex. Not that you want your child to do any of these things before, say, the age of twenty- nine, but maybe you thought you could use your accumulated wisdom to do a better job understanding and guiding your teenager than your parents did with you.

Well, as a parent, you may still be useful for a few things, like doing the laundry and providing transportation. But other than that, to a thirteen- year- old, you are nothing but old and old- fashioned. Your accumulated wisdom is boring; your efforts to keep up with technology are a joke; and even your wardrobe is embarrassing.

Does all this scare you? It should. Read on, and hear my story. You see, dear reader, things have changed since you were thirteen. Childhood doesn't fade away with the onset of puberty; now it disappears all at once. Thirteen is the new eighteen, and nothing in your own adolescence can prepare you for this moment. Soon you will be the shortest person in your house and your taste in music will be despised. That kid who just a few years ago wouldn't leave you alone long enough to drink a cup of coffee before it got cold now can't bear to spend five minutes in your presence.

But there's nothing you can do about any of this, so accept your fate. Get your own iPod, beg your kid to help you download some Bruce Springsteen, and try to find the humor in it all.

Sincerely,
The Mother of Taz

he phone rings. My husband, Elon, answers it.

“It's a girl!” he says, sounding panicky.

We have two sons, and if it's a girl, then it must be for Taz, the one who's just turned thirteen. His little brother, Sport, is only eight, and doesn't yet acknowledge that girls exist.

“Taz, phone!” I yell down the hall toward his room.

Taz comes out and takes the receiver from his father. “Hello? Oh hi, Greg.”

I look at Elon. “Greg is not a girl,” I say.

“OK,” he says. “I didn't know.”

It's an honest mistake. You see, thirteen- year- old boys come in two distinct sizes: little ones who sound like they swallowed helium, and big ones with low voices who can empty a crowded room just by removing one enormous, smelly sneaker.

The phone call was from one of the little ones, but our son is one of the big ones. He wears size- eleven sneakers, curses like a rapper, and inhales a foot- long
sandwich in four bites. When you call his cell phone, you get a message from before his voice got deep— a Munchkin- like “Yo, whaddup, it's Taz!”— but if he deigns to call you back, you think you're talking to Johnny Cash.

His tastes are surprisingly grown- up, too, considering that just a few months ago he thought he was living large if I allowed a bottle of soda in the house. But nowadays, his drink of choice isn't Coke. It's Starbucks Frappuccino.

“Coffee?” I shrieked when I first learned of his love of iced lattes and caramel macchiatos (whatever those are). “My thirteen- year- old is hooked on coffee?”

But then I remembered when I was in eighth grade, I took No- Doz to get through social studies class. (Ugh, those Federalist Papers were SOOOO boring!) If coffee had tasted as good then as it does now, I probably would have ditched the No- Doz for lattes, too.

Either way, Taz— like a lot of thirteen- year- olds— is a discriminating consumer. He likes salad, but only the baby spring mix. He likes sushi, but only cucumber rolls. (The thought of raw fish horrifies him.) And he likes spicy food— the more jalapeños, the better.

When I was a kid, I'd like to point out, spicy food did not exist (unless you count curried chicken in cream sauce, made from a recipe in
Ladies’ Home Journal).
And the only place you could get Mexican food was Mexico. In contrast, Taz, like other kids who frequent Taco Bell or the local taqueria, knows the difference between burritos,
tacos, tortillas, and quesadillas the way I knew my way around Fudgsicles, Creamsicles, and Eskimo Pies. It's no accident that Taz's namesake, the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character, is a teenage animal, known for his hearty appetite (not to mention his weakness for pretty Devil girls).

My Taz is also big on brands. He likes North Face. Timberland. Nike and Jordans. But knowing trademarks from generics is not just about clothes— it's about all kinds of products.

For example, one day when I'm headed to the drugstore, he asks me to buy Axe.

I am so proud of myself— I know what Axe is!

Well, actually another mom tipped me off— it's a deodorant popular among adolescent boys.

But I am not prepared for the ninety- nine varieties of Axe at the drugstore— row after row. They're all packaged in black dispensers with silver lettering, like some Vegas hotel room from the seventies. They have names like Adrenalin, Apollo, Phoenix, Kilo, and Tsunami. They come in body spray, deodorant sticks, shower gel. It's all very confusing to someone like me who has been buying the same brand of unscented Ban Roll- On since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

At least I can rule out the aftershave (although a friend tells me that her son used aftershave for years before he actually started shaving). I shut my eyes and pull one can of Axe off the shelf, figuring that I am more likely to pick an acceptable scent by relying on the
randomness of the universe than if I made a conscious decision based on what I think Taz will want, which would surely be wrong.

I hand my selection to the cashier without examining it too closely, pay for it, and keep the receipt in case I need to make an exchange. I bring it home, give it to Taz, and wait for the verdict.

“Is it OK?” I ask tentatively. “There were so many choices, I wasn't sure …”

Taz nods. “Thanks,” he says. “Tsunami. This is good.”

Hurray, I got the right kind of Axe! Even if it was sort of by accident. Maybe I'm not as out of touch as I had feared. I feel absurdly pleased with myself, the way I used to feel in high school if I happened to wear pink lip gloss or a velveteen blazer the same day that one of the Cool Girls did.

But now the rest of us— Elon, our youngest son, Sport, and I— have to live with the smell of Axe, and some days I'm not so sure it's any better than body odor. Taz uses it more than regularly, spraying not just his body but also his clothes and even his room.

It is a sickly sweet odor, strong and musky, like cheap incense, and it seeps out from under his closed door— his door is almost always closed— and into the hallway. There it creates a virtual mushroom cloud that eventually radiates into every corner of our small apartment. But the epicenter of the bomb zone is definitely traceable to his room.

“Ugh, I can't stand that smell,” Elon says as he arrives home from work one day after a particularly powerful Axe detonation. Taz's room is right next to the front door, so eau de Axe always hits you hard the minute you step over the threshold. And when you first inhale it, you can't imagine how you're going to get on with your life, swallow your food, or concentrate on anything more complicated than watching TV.