One Plus OneBy Coleen ArmstrongDarrell wasn't getting along with his father. “The old man,” as Darrell called him, was constantly on his case. For the usual stuff, staying out late, skipping school, acting belligerent. His dad didn't especially care for Darrell's tastes, either, not in music (heavy metal), hairstyles (cropped beard, shaved head), or even friends (leather-jacketed types).
“My dad is totally out of touch,” Darrell told me. “He bugs me to death. Why can't he realize I'm not here to live up to his expectations?”
I followed this father-son saga with more than a passing interest, for the simple reason that I knew Darrell's father well. Too well.
Twenty-five years earlier, he’d been one of my students.
The implications were jarring. First of all, if Darrell considered his father the old man, then where did that leave me? If Dad was out of touch, then where was teacher? I didn’t want to think about it. Instead, I watched Darrell Two carefully. My mind drifted back to a time when kids chewing gum and passing notes ranked as a teacher's biggest headaches. In those days we got upset about peace signs sketched on notebooks. Now it was swastikas, skulls and crossbones, faces dripping blood…and we didn't dare confront anyone for fear of lawsuits. Times had changed.
But Darrell One was difficult enough in his day. I remembered him clearly: A card-carrying member of the after-school detention club. Utterly obsessed with the need to lower the drinking age. And the driving age.
“If I'm tall enough to see over the steering wheel,” he told our class one day, “I should be allowed to drive.”
“What if you're only twelve years old?” I asked.
“So what?”
Yes, I could still hear him saying outrageous things: Parents and teachers should mind their own business. Getting drunk on weekends was a teenager's privilege. And, of course, if twelve-year-olds had driving accidents, no big deal; other people should just stay out of their way. Did he really believe such silliness? Maybe. More likely he was just listening to himself rant, trying out the sound of his own voice, as so many did as that age.
But I'll bet he didn't remember it that way, now that his teenage son was spewing the same nonsense. Darrell Two at seventeen was much the same as his father. Perhaps a little brighter, a little nicer. Not much better…but certainly no worse.
That's why Darrell One was on his son's case. He was an adult now, trying to fix the boy. Two decades after the fact, he was also trying to fix himself. Of course it couldn't be done. So I figured Darrell One should stop worrying so much. Darrell Two wasn't a vandal, a car thief, or a drug abuser. He was a pretty decent kid who'd turn out fine, once he gained a little age and wisdom. Just like his father.
Their clash was, in fact, a scenario played out generation after generation. Control versus independence, parents trying to mold their children into better people versus the kids' insistence on being themselves…whatever that meant. Someday they'd discover that after years of trying to deny that they were anything like Mom and Dad, genes and early conditioning won out after all.
In the meantime I could laugh at the notion of a Twilight-Zone schedule change, placing Darrells One and Two in the same class at the same age. Watching them become best buddies as they proclaimed the virtues of total teenage freedom. On weekends they'd defy all restrictions, go out cruising, drinking, partying…
Maybe even get their twelve-year-old cousin to drive. Coleen Armstrong’s distinguished teaching career includes several state and national recognition awards. She is the co-author of Please Don’t Call My Mother: How Schools and Parents can Work Together to Get Kids Back on Track with John Lazares and The Truth about Teaching: What I Wish the Veterans had Told Me. |
