This column ran in the Sunday News Living Section March 30. It is posted here in honor of my kid’s high-school graduation.
I’d like you to meet my son.
That’s him over there, all feet and legs and contrarian hair, with the Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and the floor-sweeping pants.
Something of a free spirit, this kid.
It’d take a team of trained, heavily equipped professionals to clean his bedroom. His diet staples are A.1. Steak Sauce and Mountain Dew. As for his exercise regimen, well, he can flat-out sleep.
He’s 18. Don’t believe the hype.
To be fair, he’s a lot easier to deal with now than when he was little. Then, he never slept. Imagine the contribution that made to the air of gracious living and civility chez Gross.
He once went over a year, somewhere in the age 1-to-2 range, without ever going to sleep. At least that’s how I remember it, but I was really tired at the time.
So he’s not a model kid. He’s a phenomenal kid.
He doesn’t like school, but he likes to think and read and write. Happily, he can write. Happily, he has never text-messaged. He hates, and can detect at a thousand paces, fluff and nonsense and hypocrisy and hype.
He can imitate Beavis and Butthead.
He’s smart and funny and polite and kind and sensitive to others and loves to laugh and utterly gets family and sees more of the big picture than you think.
He’s actually low-maintenance for his demographic. He doesn’t want a car. He doesn’t want to run the streets. He doesn’t want to drink beer. He doesn’t want to argue with me or his mother. He doesn’t want to “rebel.’’
He certainly doesn’t want to watch sports, with his Dad or anyone else.
As to what he does want, beyond supermodels, the fact that we’re about to elect a president has not escaped his attention. What he wants to do, get this, is vote. Honest.
He reads the Op-Ed section. He reads the Huffington Post. He’ll talk politics with almost anyone, even people who think someone named Barack Obama must be a Muslim.
Even most politicians don’t do that. Just Bill Clinton, Chris Matthews and my kid.
I suppose it’s possible he’ll run for office someday, although that would involve haircuts and pants that fit.
He doesn’t yet know enough about history or economics or the mechanics of government or life as one probably should to vote with true intelligence and independence.
On the other hand: Do you?
Regardless, he’s got a registration, and he intends to use it.
So, next month, we’ll walk down the street to the elementary-school gym, where I’ve voted for decades, feeling quite adult and American, and exercise our constitutional prerogative.
I’m probably looking forward to it more than he is.
And while we’re walking home, he’ll no doubt mention, yet again, the one part of this that bugs him, the thing that’s bothered him as much as anything since Rodney Dangerfield died.
He’ll never get to vote against George W. Bush.
