Act Accordingly

I'm 15 and my best friend and I are on the front porch of his parent's house listening to his father explain his fears and thoughts about the world in the days following the attacks on September 11th.

“..and already there was an Indian or a Pakastani guy working at a gas station out in Oklahoma that got killed.”

He exhaling puffs of smoke with each word, shaking his head.

“It’s what happens when things like this happen. Some ignorant jackass decides he doesn’t like the look of this foreigner he’s probably seen every week for years and this is what they think they can do.”

The lit tip of his cigarette trailed smoke through the air as he pointed to us and exhaled another cloud. “God willing, you two will be friends forever. You’ll be able to see what happens on the other end of this. You’ll be able to remember what this was like and you can be the kind of person they should have been in this moment.”

“Something like this happens and it should bring people together, you know? It should remind us of what’s important, but this is what really happens. The news doesn't even have all of the story. But you can bet America's going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

We just listened for the most part but, looking back on it, while I was seeing the wisdom in the words I realize the friend I was standing next to had to determine how much of what his old man was telling us was what he actually felt.

This gospel was preached 6 months before he punched my best friend, the one I'm standing right next to, in the face for refusing to let his older brother get away with another pernicious act of malice.

This was before he stopped buying scratch-off tickets from the gas station and before his granddaughter stopped running to him with a quarter ready to help in his mission every time he came in the door.

This particular conversation was before he came to view the world as Us versus Them.

I don't have a lot of patriotic memories in this post-9/11 time. I had the expected shock, sorrow and swell of anger. Everyone in my age bracket shared talk of how awesome it would be to spearhead the delivery of the retribution owed.

Some of them actually enlisted.

A few of them came back.

But that's not what this memory of me and my best friend in his front yard with his dad conjures in me.

It’s strange when grown ups decide they don’t want to set an example anymore. Like there’s a shelf life of parenthood and once their kids hit 18 they no longer have to be a decent model of behavior.

Like that’s the magic age when your kid stops weighing your words or seeing what you do and realizing it isn’t what you tell them to do.

This father would soon remind his son and some of the skinheads he hung out with that he had lost two uncles in World War Two who fought to end Hitler’s madness.

But this was before Obama took office and it became ok for his dad to use the N word whenever he wanted to.

Before he decided his son was on his own.

I didn’t know it then but my friend listened to these tirades regularly. Whenever his mom or dad felt like unloading a heavy dose of 'You should listen to me' the whole house would come to a stop and they needed center stage to provide a proper education to their kids.

This was years after a teacher make his mother feel like she wasn’t a fit parent. After she decided she’d pull her sons out off school and homeschool them and after she’d given up on any kind of structure for homeschooling decided her time as teacher was over. After telling other homeschool parents who would call or stop by that her boys could learn what they needed to know in the real world without her having to be tied to a routine.

This was after his dad went to Panama. After he came back damaged and after he admitted to his affair and found out about hers.

No matter what you say in front of a crowd, your kids know who you really are. Who you really are. They see the you behind the answers, behind the politeness, behind the mask.

To think your job as a parent is over when your children hit 18 shows you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes up an adult. You don’t get to wait for 18 like it’s some kind of finish line.

Know what the kicker is? You don’t know you had a good upbringing until 20 years later when you talk to this friend you were listening with on that September afternoon and wonder how it is he has all this baggage, all this pent-up frustration and anxiety and still lives with both of the parents he can’t stand but can’t find a way to get away from.

His dad looked at kids like a sentence: 18 years and then it’s over. He has whatever he’s learned from birth to 18 and he’s off to find his own way from there. I don’t know if he ever said as much, but that's the impression his son still has today. The impression his son has worked hard not to pass on to his own kids.

Most of the lessons that stick with your kids came before they hit 7 years old and most of those didn’t have words.

Honesty is where it really starts because if we’re honest with ourselves, how much of this life did we have all figured out at 18? At 21? At 30? How in the world can you expect your kid to have any better a handle on things than you did at that age?

Anyone in a hurry to shuffle their kid into the world at 18 has given up. They need the world to teach this kid the rest of what he needs to know because they're for damn sure not working overtime on this one.

My dad showed me kids are an investment; A 401k of sorts. You put time and effort and patience into them. You be the best example you’ve had or you be the example you wish you had at that age and you show them what you wish you'd known, the good in people, the patience in lessons and love in your attempts to help them. You give them opportunities to play in a small container of risk so they never hurt themselves enough to be scared to try again and you keep contributing little by little day after day and one day you see them take the opportunity to put that advice into action.

Always be kind. Always help. If you can’t do anything to help at the very least you should do no harm.

They won't have to stop and think about it, they just do it. From where they stood it was the only option and they weren’t concerned with who was around to see it, they just were the example they had seen.

Consistency is key.

Kids will often look to you for an example and the longer you push them away because you just don’t want to be a parent right now the longer the pause you are forcing on their development is.

You don’t get to call a time out so you can disappear and come back to them pissed because they don't know something you didn’t bother to teach them – and that should speak volumes to you.

Some of them aren’t smart enough to step up and don’t deserve the kids they have. They’re selfish and hard and impatient and easily frustrated and they're the ones who hit that pause button so much that eventually they forget to come back.

And the kid learns that.

Sure, there are limits to this idea but their faults as children are your failures as a parent.

Because they’re going to be whatever example you set for them.

Know who starts adulthood behind the curve? The kid who doesn't know what they need to do to be loved by the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally. They’re always gonna wonder if something was wrong with them at 7, some reason the people who were supposed to be there to guide them always had something more important to do. And there was nothing wrong with them then, but there is now. And it’s not their fault.

They’re gonna get hit a lot more than they should because they had a bunch they had to learn on their own. Life is going to throw them lessons they're not prepared for and they'll have to learn to persevere more than someone who was taught that this is all part of the ride.

You don't know what you don't know.

But you don't get to critique them. You don't get to have their attention because you're the wiser, older person. Your time was years ago and you sat out every class they needed a partner for. You will speak when you're spoken to and not before.

And when you see how they take those hits you need to remember: You can only fight as well as you practice.