Shane is a teenager. This fact occasionally escapes me, because he is so much more compliant than Dylan.
One morning, Dylan left for the day and I was alone with Shane. Normally this would be a case for a day of board games and trips to the ice cream parlor, library and/or movies. But on this particular day, I said goodbye to Dylan in the yard – and when I came back inside, Shane was gone.
“Shane?” I called – but got no answer. I looked upstairs. His bedroom door was closed, meaning that he wanted to do his own thing for awhile.
Hm, I thought. I guess he doesn’t want to hang out right now. So I plopped myself down in front of the computer and checked my email.
About an hour later, Shane emerged from his room, came downstairs, and sat at his computer to play a video game.
“I need to talk to you,” I said. I explained a laundry issue I’d been having, and then talked to him about high school orientation.
“Okay,” he grunted. Then he turned around and started playing his video game.
(Since Shane is a stickler for accuracy, I will say that it’s possible that he grunted more than one word, but I don’t remember it that way.)
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Have you eaten lunch?”
“I’m fine,” he said – but his voice was even more monotone than usual. He did not look at me.
Shane virtually lives on carbohydrates, especially at breakfast time, which isn’t great for his developing brain and body. “You should really eat lunch,” I suggested. “You could use a little protein.”
A few minutes later, with barely a hint of chair-shoving, Shane got up and made himself lunch. He plopped himself down in front of the TV and ate plain pasta.
I went in and looked at him. He looked back at me without the slightest hint of joy. A few minutes later he got up, went into the kitchen, and cut himself a piece of cake.
“You still seem a bit cranky. Did you eat any protein?” I asked. While I realize that there’s more to healthy eating than just adding protein, it is often the best I can do with Shane.
“I had cheese on my pasta,” he told me.
“That’s not enough, Shane. You are really grouchy. Please eat a couple of chunks of chicken.”
“But I want cake,” he argued.
“You can have cake,” I told him. “Just please eat some protein first.”
So Shane ate a few chunks of chicken. Then he went back to the TV for his cake.
I stayed in the office, out of his way.
One minute later, he came out and said, “Phineas and Ferb is on, if you want to watch it with me.” Shane knows I love Phineas and Ferb. He probably didn’t want anything to do with me, but he was trying to be nice.
“That’s okay,” I told him. “Thanks, but you can watch whatever you want.”
And he did. He watched Phineas and Ferb without me. After all, he needs his space.
But it was nice to be invited, just the same.
After seeing nearly a hundred colleges, and going back to officially tour a couple dozen of those, Dylan narrowed down his list of favorite colleges. He planned to apply to only six.
Six, I thought, was a sufficient number. Interestingly, he dropped all the “party” schools as a prerequisite to his official visits. And he rather randomly eliminated another handful without returning to do the in-depth tours. Dylan knew what he liked and what he wanted most, and he was able to decide pretty easily which colleges he most valued.
Because of his ADHD especially, we suggested that he apply to as many colleges as possible before the school year started. This wasn’t an easy task for Dylan, who puts off any anxiety-provoking tasks until the last possible second.
But then … a miracle happened. The miracle is called the Common Application. Unlike my (very) old days of handwritten or typed, snail-mail applications, the “Common App” is a simple, online submission form that is accepted by hundreds of colleges.
Four of Dylan’s six chosen colleges accept the “Common App,” so he started completing it. He filled in the appropriate boxes sometime in late June. Then, when the “Common App” became live – meaning, colleges would start accepting applications – Dylan needed only to finish filling in the rest of those boxes and click “submit.”
So he did. He discovered that one college required something entirely out of date and unnecessary. That college happened to be at the bottom of his list of six, so he dropped it from the list.
Down to only five applications, Dylan panicked a little bit. His fall-back school was gone – so on what would he now fall back? Would it be community college? Or was there a different option?
The Common App stepped up to the task. Dylan noticed that some of his college choices had no fee to apply. Some did have a fee, but at least one of his favorites was free. So he thought, “I wonder if any other colleges are free.”
According to the Common App site, there are three hundred and thirty – yes, 330! – colleges that not only accept the Common App but they also have no fee to apply. So Dylan had only to choose a few schools from the many he’d seen, decide which ones would be worthy fallback schools, and put them on his list to apply.
It took him an hour, and he had applied to three new fall-back schools. He also found one “free” school that is going to send us gallivanting around the country again, since he hadn’t yet seen it and it is a great school, so we want to visit. But for the most part, everything was so simple that Dylan had applied to six colleges by mid-August.
Unfortunately, two of his original choices don’t accept the Common App, so he is still working on those. The goal – the one I’ve set for him so that he can concentrate on music auditions in the fall – is that he will have applied to all the colleges on his list (now nine) by the end of September. Then, when his friends are scrambling to apply during winter break, we can do something fun with our time.
Of course, there are still SAT scores to be ordered, transcripts to be requested, and the ever-elusive teacher recommendations to attain. But for the most part, Dylan is well on his way.
When Dylan and I spent the entire day driving for a college interview, Shane stayed home and had the whole house to himself. This was a real treat for him, because he has never been alone at home for that long. I left him this note for when he woke up:
Dear Shane,
I can’t even believe you are old enough to stay home alone, but here you are – old enough to stay home alone ALL DAY LONG.
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least give you some motherly words of wisdom before leaving. So here goes:
1. “Remiss” means neglecting my duty. (This may come in handy when you take the SATs in a few years.) Speaking of being remiss, when you’re alone and the dishwasher is clean, you actually have to empty it. Sorry about that, but that’s how it works.
2. If you feel the need to use the stove – by all means, TURN IT OFF IMMEDIATELY when you are done cooking. The percentage of house fires that start in the kitchen is astronomical. Please do not add to that percentage.
3. The dog might go out and sit on the deck instead of peeing. Make sure she pees, especially since you’re only letting her out every few hours, but she is allowed to sit on the deck for as long as she likes, as long as you are nearby. I try not to leave her outside for more than half an hour, so she doesn’t get too hot, cold or uncomfortable.
4. You are allowed to be on electronics, video games and TV all day long. When no parents are around, no one can stop you from doing this. But remember: this will make your special day go really fast, and you will feel like you’ve missed it when it’s over. Enjoy your time, and do something like writing stories, coloring, chatting on the phone, reading a book, dancing to the jukebox, and/or walking the dog. Activities that are not electronic don’t “waste” time – they enhance it. You can also weed bushes if you’d like.
5. If you are leaving home (see #4 about walking the dog, above), please be careful if you intend to cross the street, or let the dog off the leash, or wander through the woods alone. I suggest you do none of those things, for ultimate safety.
That’s all the motherly wisdom I can convey for your one day alone. I think you’re a responsible, mature person and that you will make responsible, mature choices today. And regardless of what those choices are, I love you and I hope you have a good day.
Love,
Mom
PS-You know I will call a bunch of times, but it’s not because I don’t trust you. It’s because I will miss you when I’m gone. And also sometimes I forget stuff.
At the end of the day, just before Bill got home from work and took him out to dinner and ping pong, I texted Shane and asked if he had a good day.
Shane responded:
Yeah
I know on ur note you said that I probably shouldn’t spend the whole day on electronics
But I kinda maybe spent the whole day on electronics
I did take the dog for a walk and empty the dishwasher and played a little bit of wall ping pong tho
But I watched way too much TV.
Shane’s real concern is that he watched nearly an entire season of a new show, and the next season doesn’t start for more than a month.
I guess we all learn the hard way.
During the summer months, about a dozen summer workshops were offered to high school juniors and seniors preparing to apply to colleges. The workshops covered every possible aspect of college admissions, from essay writing to ivy league admissions secrets.
Dylan agreed that some of these workshops might be helpful for him, although he was going to be out of town for many of them. Still, he signed up for two.
The first one, Completing the Common App, started at 10 a.m. on an otherwise plan-less day. As usual, I got up that morning early, showered, made breakfast and waited for Dylan to come downstairs. But Dylan turned off his alarm, went back to sleep, and missed the whole thing.
It was quite frustrating.
But… he woke up in such a panic that he completed nearly the entire Common App on his own in about an hour. So there was an up-side.
For the second workshop, I was feeling slightly under the weather. I had been sleeping a lot, trying to get over whatever was bothering me. So I offered Dylan an opportunity.
“I trust you,” I told Dylan. “But I don’t trust that you will get up in the morning and go to your workshop. So I am not going to get out of bed to see what happens. If you want to go, you can take the car.”
This caught his attention. I continued: “You need to eat a healthy breakfast and leave by 9:30. The main road is closed, so you will have to go the long way around. And if you make it to the workshop, you can go out to lunch with your girlfriend afterward. Does that work for you?”
He nodded, nearly giddy. He started texting his girlfriend before I even finished my offer.
Then, on the morning of the workshop, I woke up two full hours before it was supposed to start. I wanted to jump up and see if Dylan was getting ready yet. I wanted to write a note and put it in the car, in case he did. I wanted to casually sit downstairs to watch what happened.
But I didn’t. Instead, I forced myself to go back to sleep. I was sick, so it wasn’t that hard to do.
When I woke up again, Dylan’s bedroom door was open and sun was streaming through the window. He was gone. The car was gone.
I texted him, “Congratulations!” Then I offered him an additional half hour with his girlfriend if he came home with his much-needed registration code for his school’s online college prep program.
Unfortunately, the “extra time with the girlfriend” didn’t work because she wasn’t allowed to go to lunch. And even though he could have skedaddled with the car for two hours, he didn’t.
Dylan chose to do the right thing instead. He drove directly home, which is what I’d asked him to do if his girlfriend couldn’t do lunch. Not only that – but he came home with the registration code!
He did what he needed to do – but sadly, didn’t get to do what he wanted to do.
So I told him he could go to the coffee shop. I even told him he could drive Shane – for the first time ever – to the coffee shop, too.
I am not sure what was wrong with me. I was queasy the whole time they were gone. But they both survived.
Overall, it was a highly successful, productive day.
Even though it is summer and all other extracurricular activities have been postponed, Shane still wants to play ping pong.
Shane has become so good at ping pong in the last nine months that none of us can beat him anymore. When I play against him, I feel like I am a toddler playing against an Olympian. I have to stand waaaaaaay back from the table in order to reach the balls that he slams at me, and when I get a point it’s rarely because I have done well. Occasionally, Shane makes a mistake. And then, like any good mom, I cheer.
But Shane doesn’t want to play with me, if he can help it. He likes to go to the weekly league and play other people who also slam the ball across the table. Sometimes I take him to the league; more often, I decline.
I care too much about sports, apparently, to keep my mouth shut when the games are over. I love to watch him play, to slam that ball back and forth at his opponent. But I always get upset if he loses. I get particularly angry when someone cheats Shane out of a point – which happens more often than you would think – and when there’s no one standing next to him, telling him how wonderfully he plays.
Shane, however, doesn’t get upset. Or at least, he doesn’t appear to be upset. And because it matters so much to me, I asked him about his feelings.
“Do you care if you win or lose?” I asked him.
“Sometimes,” Shane said. “If I lose a bunch of matches that I should have won, I get really upset for about five minutes.”
“And then after five minutes, it just goes away? I mean, do you stuff it down or do you just not feel upset anymore?”
“Sometimes it’s ten minutes,” he said, always wanting to be quantitatively accurate. “But after that, I just don’t feel upset anymore.”
“I get really upset,” I told him. “Sometimes I am still thinking about it three days later, and I’m not even playing!”
“Yeah I know,” Shane said. “If you or Grandad take me, you guys will still be talking about ping pong way after I’ve stopped thinking about it.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought I was being helpful.”
“Maybe you are but I just don’t really listen after those ten minutes,” he said, still wanting to be quantitatively accurate. “So when you guys take me, I always have to ask you to just stop talking. It’s better if Daddy takes me to ping pong because he doesn’t care at all.”
Shane’s father is rather uninterested in anything related to athletic competition.
“Okay,” I said, only half disappointed. When I don’t watch, I don’t get upset.
Not even for ten minutes.
Dylan took the SAT test in June, and was excited when the SAT scores arrived.
He had been happy with his first SAT score, which was a full 1,000 points above his best PSAT (practice) score. But he wanted to take it again in June, since the county offered a free voucher for any junior who wanted to take it.
He took the test and said, minutes afterward, “I feel pretty good about it. I think I did even better on the math section than last time.”
Notoriously, Dylan struggles with math – so this was good news. Unfortunately, he was not so happy when his scores came in. His English/reading test scores went up 20 points – but his math scores dropped fifty points, pulling down his overall score.
A few weeks later, I got an email from Dylan’s high school career counselor. It offered us a spot in an upcoming seminar – one that would “explain” how and why the June SAT scores were so disappointing.
WHAT?!? Other people had lower test scores, too?!
I didn’t need to wait for some seminar to find out – I wanted to know now! So I hopped on the internet.
Apparently, the SAT questions change with every test – and with the June test, the math questions were “easier” than the math questions on the prior test.
So they graded on a harder curve.
A whole bunch of kids with excellent math results got horrible math scores. One mom had this to say:
One daughter got 760 getting only 5 wrong in math in March. Her twin missed 6 in math on June 2 test and got 670? 90 point difference in overall SAT scores for just ONE math question? How is that fair or standardized?
Another student was furious.
My first SAT I miss 26 questions and score a 1400. My second SAT I miss 16 questions and score a 1350?!
So I became furious, too. I signed a petition. I posted on Facebook. I fumed around the house. I shared everything I knew with Dylan, who read it with interest.
But … there’s nothing we can do to “fix” the problem. The scores are randomly generated – and also “curved” – by a corporate entity over which we have no control.
And Dylan’s scores are now stored by that same corporate entity, until we give them “permission” to release the scores to colleges.
Dylan’s fate rests in the hands of the admissions offices of those colleges, who may or may not have read the article on the Inside Higher Ed website. And they may or may not think his first score was just “lucky” and his second score was “real.”
I don’t take much stock in SAT scores anyway – but some colleges still do.
What a shame that, for Dylan, so much depends on the College Board. Of course, I emailed them. A week or so later, they responded with a very lengthy explanation of why they were right about a process they call “equating.”
“The equating process adjusts for the variation in difficulty between forms to ensure fairness for all students. And because of the difference between forms, you can’t directly compare the number of questions answered correctly.”
Their email was encrypted, eleven paragraphs long, and said virtually nothing. I think they drafted a form letter to respond to all of the angry parents, hoping that we would be too confused to write again. I wrote again anyway, with a new appreciation for the futility of my effort.
Shane will be taking the ACT, administered by a hopefully less frustrating organization. I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.
After allowing Dylan to drive Shane to the coffee shop, I was a nervous wreck. When I gave them the opportunity to go out together, the offer came out of my mouth before my brain could filter it.
I was terrified, and determined not to run up the road after them or text them to see if they made it to their destination.
Alas, my children know me so well. Twenty minutes after they left, I got a text from Dylan’s phone:
We drove the car off a bridge and we are currently plummeting to our deaths. Love you!
Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!! (I replied, with five sad faces.) Wait, what bridge?
Idk I just know we fallin. Oh also Shane is drunk and I’m on meth
Well that won’t matter in a few minutes. But my stuff is in that car!
It’s ok I’m sure the police will pull it out when they pull the car out – jeeze this must have been a really tall bridge
indeed! I will miss you darlings! I love you very much!
I love you too!
Hello! (This was followed by a farmer boy icon, which meant that Shane had snatched Dylan’s phone.)
(I sent back a brown goat.)
That was Shane. He wanted to let you know that he said hi – apparently. Welp I think I see the water finally so I’ll see ya in a few decades!
goodbye dear ones. I will see you in the next world.
I smiled nearly the whole time they were gone. Thanks, Dylan, for thinking of me.
While the kids were at camp, I had lots of time to myself. One day, I got an email that said – thanks to a settlement on some Ticketmaster court case – I had earned the right to:
TRADE YOUR VOUCHERS FOR UNFORGETTABLE LIVE CONCERTS NOW!
I had a vague recollection of putting my name out there, eons ago, so that a “Ticketmaster settlement” could be shared with me, whenever it came to fruition. I didn’t think it would be in the form of free concerts, but hey – that sounded good!
I discovered that I had not one or two “vouchers,” but seventeen vouchers, each good for two tickets to any eligible event. So I was eligible to get 34 free tickets!
I spent almost an hour searching through the “eligible events.” The concerts near us may have been good for the kids, but the venue is far from home and not a particularly nice place to see a concert. Plus, Dylan works – a lot – and he works at a concert venue. So he’s already seeing a ton of concerts this summer.
So I started searching out of our area – at places where we might be traveling through for college visits or vacations. And sure enough, eventually, I found one: a concert we could see on our way home from vacation. All four of us would enjoy it, and we wouldn’t be able to see that group at any other time or place – at least not anytime soon.
So I thought, hey, I have seventeen vouchers! I will use two of them for tickets to this great concert, and we will get to see this great group for free! Plus we can extend our vacation by one day, which the kids will love.
I clicked, “Redeem Voucher.” The website very happily put me on hold for a second … (Searching for Tickets…) and then it provided me with all of my options for that event:
FAST LANE ACCESS
PREMIER PARKING
VIP CLUB ACCESS
RESERVED LAWN ACCESS
LAWN CHAIR RENTAL
OVERSIZED VEHICLE PARKING
Every single one of these great options had one caveat:
THIS IS NOT A CONCERT TICKET.
I went and checked another “eligible event,” just in case.
VIP CLUB UPGRADE
PREMIER PARKING
LOUNGE ACCESS
And again, there was the warning attached to each one:
THIS IS NOT A CONCERT TICKET.
In other words, for my “settlement,” all I can get is a lawn chair rental or a place to park my oversized vehicle outside the venue.
I can’t actually get any concert tickets.
Like I said, I had lots of time on my hands during camp week. But geez, what a waste.
In order to be sure that Shane went to high school with a slew of friends and plenty of stuff to do, I encouraged him to join the school marching band. He has been a percussionist since elementary school.
I should have known, last summer when I forced him to take lessons, that he wasn’t terribly enthused. But I thought marching about on a football field with 50 of your closest friends sounded like great fun. It made me wish I played the drums.
Shane went to practice faithfully in May and June, every Wednesday. When I asked him how practice was, he said, “fine,” and then talked about the other percussionists (who are not very nice to him) and about the new drums he was playing (which he didn’t really enjoy) and about the upcoming activities (which didn’t appeal to him).
I ignored all of the signs.
“It will get better,” I said.
“You’ll like it more when you’re with the whole band,” I said.
“You’ll like it when you’re marching,” I said.
I paid $300 for equipment, transportation, a uniform and fees. “You’re sure you want to be in marching band, right?” I asked jovially before hitting the PAY button.
“I guess,” he said.
After practice one day he said, “I wish I could practice at home, but I don’t know how to set up the drums.”
I emailed his band teacher, who suggested that he take home the actual drum set. So, while Shane was at camp, I picked up his drums. I was so excited about giving him his own drums to practice.
They were heavy. And we had a little trouble setting them up. But we did it, then left him alone to practice. After about twenty minutes, he stopped playing.
We went upstairs and found Shane. To put it mildly, he was rather unhappy. Even he didn’t know what was wrong. But in the course of a short conversation, he said he was concerned about marching band. He didn’t even know what was bothering him so deeply.
“Make a list of pros and cons,” I suggested – as my dad, years earlier, had suggested to me. “It will help you see what’s bothering you about marching band and put it into perspective. Then you can make a mature, informed decision about what you need to do.”
Shane’s list of “pros” was four points, one of which wasn’t even accurate. (They do not provide free food at band camp.) “It might get better” was his strongest “pro.”
His list of “cons,” though, was massive – 11 very strong, heartfelt points, not the least of which was: “I don’t really like to play the drums.”
But the most telling “con” was: “I’m never excited to go.” I asked him specifically about that.
“Well, I always want it to be Tuesday or Friday so I can play table tennis,” Shane said. “But I am never excited when it’s Wednesday.”
Shane doesn’t like marching band, I realized. It’s just not his thing.
“Gee Shane,” I said, looking up from his list. “You might want to quit.”
The relief on Shane’s face, the relief in his whole body, was palpable. He worried about the money; he worried about my reaction; and he worried he was disappointing the rest of the band. He wanted everyone else to be happy, and he had been willing to march – no matter what – even though it was crushing his spirit.
“Don’t worry about anyone but you,” I said. “And from now on, let’s work on communicating about how you really feel.”
When this year’s AP scores posted online, we were all on a hayride near a dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania. School was the furthest thing from my mind.
But Dylan remembered. Yes. Dylan remembered.
Dylan’s AP test was a particular spectacle this year, because it’s the one that caused two weeks’ worth of agony for the special ed coordinator, the school principal, Dylan’s case manager, and his two parents. We spent hours faxing and talking on the phone with the College Board – because this was the AP test that Dylan had to take without the accommodation of a computer.
His college-level essays were all handwritten in typical, kindergarten-esque, Dylan-ish fashion.
To say I was “concerned” that he would fail would be an enormous understatement. Many blogs in late April and early May will attest to that. But when I was on the hayride, school was not even a blip on my radar. I was having farm fun with the boys.
So when Dylan announced that he was checking his test scores, just after we stepped off the wagon, my stomach clenched. This AP test is the one that will give him credit in an English class – a “$10,000 class” we called it. And this AP test is the one that didn’t allow him the opportunity to use a computer to compose two lengthy essays.
He needed a score of 4 or 5 to get college credit for the class. On his prior AP test (a computer programming test that was done on – duh – a computer), Dylan had only gotten a 3. We weren’t exactly anticipating the current AP test results.
Dylan looked a bit queasy when he looked up from his phone, having gotten his answer.
“What did you get?” I cracked.
Dylan held up four fingers.
“I got a 4,” he said. “I got a 4!”
He passed. He did well. Dylan’s got his first college credit – and he did it without even using a computer!
He got a 4. Hallelujah!
