You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Learning from your children.
Between bites of a chicken parmigiana sandwich, my 20 year old began telling me how my new idea didn’t work.
He told me that it wasn’t funny and in some ways blatantly disjointed.
He told me that 18-35 year olds want funny tweets that illicit immediate reaction and gratification. It was as if I were talking to Tiger Woods in Vegas at a Hooker convention.
My son basically told me that my new idea was meandering horse crap that wasted his time.
Wow.
He wasn’t through. He told me he has showed my idea to his college room mates and the reaction was less acceptable than warm beer the morning after.
I think he was nervous about telling me his thoughts. I was after all asking him to tell me the truth. His version of the truth was: Dad your idea kind of sucks and feels old. His take on what I had been doing was “Dad you are sort of wasting your time.”
Damn. If I was a scientist, this was the petri dish, finally placed under the microscope that showed me a sample of Ebola starting to thrive.
After unloading on me with honesty, he paused. I think he was nervous.
He gave me that look right before I use to send him to time out as a 6 year old.
I stared into his face, now more chiseled, now more angular, now covered with stupid whiskers. Hiding beneath it all I saw that little boy I raised.
Instead of sending him to time out. I thanked him.
I thought about the kid whose diaper I changed, whose ass I wiped, who taught me to be a first time father as he was being a first time human.
I had spent an entire life time imparting my wisdom to him. I had spent 20 years of life teaching and educating and imparting knowledge and seldom had I stopped to ever let him reciprocate.
Then over a chicken parmigiana sandwich it happened.
Student became teacher.
It was like a scene out of the Karate Kid.
Wax on. Wax off.
I suddenly thought about the passing of life, the years gone by, the turning of the proverbial page.
I was looking into the eyes of a young man who was no longer the child I had to tell “don’t stick that fork in the electrical socket please.”
I was suddenly facing the realization that my 20 year old knew way more about the demographic I was trying to captivate.
“hey don’t play with that fire truck on the stairs.”
Those days of simple wisdom, dad to son, had suddenly reversed, like the mighty Mississippi river flowing backward during the great New Madrid Earthquake.
As he showed me countless Twitter pages and posts that make him laugh, I thought to myself.
Life is a circle, like a huge record playing the songs of our life. Sometimes it’s hard to know where we are in the revolution of that LP. Sometimes it’s hard to know when the song is half over, but there are choruses along the way that resonate.
That chicken parmigiana sandwich was one of those songs along the way.
Thanks son.
now if I can only remember what my damn Twitter handle is.
And that is crazy.