the company arrived

His father had given me fair warning.

One of these days, you see, you will say good night to your dear son, and in the morning a stranger will come up those stairs, tangled hair, expressionless eyes (it would not be the day to remember that the eyes are the window of your soul), without stockings and looking for his shoes.

I approach with caution.

I greet the stranger with a good morning.

Silence.

Again, good morning.

A murmur returns followed by a Yeahhhh.

Excuse me, what have you done with my son?

I must admit he does look alike, but his looks, his way of speaking, and oh yeah, the big one, his attitude bear little resemblance to my son of the last 13 years.

Again I ask him what he has done with my son.

His father sat motionless, sipping his morning coffee. His face hides his expression behind the newspaper; but he knew he couldn’t wait to remind me of his warnings that started about six months ago.

It happens, one day you will not recognize it. You will think that someone has kidnapped your precious and perfect son. What you get is the satisfaction of knowing that he will recover. He went on to tell me his story, and one he also remembers, is that God descends during the night and removes vital parts of his brain to keep them safe. In about ten or fifteen years, you may be lucky and see some improvements: you may remember our names and phone numbers, be thankful for this; But do not be fooled. God will come back and replace all the missing pieces when he is ready.

At that exact moment, my son, while climbing the stairs, the stairs he mastered at 3 years old, proceeded to fall on his face. I walked towards the stairs to see what he had tripped over: nothing.

What happened?

I fell.

How

I don’t know.

What about you?

I don’t know.

I feel eyes enter me and I turn to see distinct ripples in the newspaper.

Looking over, I turn to the newspaper; do you have something to add?

Without looking over the horizon of the paper, I only listen: I told you so.

He certainly knew what was wrong; he must have inherited it from his father’s side of the family.

For the next few weeks, I was busy replacing the missing runners, pencils, books, school ID tags, safety locks, and backpacks, all of course not lost by my son, but some aliens came down and took them.

Now he was convinced that there was a medical problem. It is not possible that a young, productive, cooperative, educated child can lose most of his vocabulary, resorting to a monotony of 10 words or less; his balance sheet has vanished; and no longer having the common sense to remember hitting a fence hurts, all night.

The billowing newspaper responded to my concerns only by telling me to take a pill and sit down.

I consulted our family doctor. I was told that puberty sometimes lasts about five years; This is the same doctor who told me that life begins at 40.

Standing at the living room window watching my son walk home from the road, he suddenly disappeared, with no evidence of where he went. Then the cotoneaster hedge moved: it had fallen into the hedge. When he surfaced, there were obvious scares from their battle in the hedge.

I had resolved, for my own sanity, to mediate these unexplained events myself and define it as done at the hands (or in this case, at the feet) of an escaped anteater. My life had become one, without logic, so for the next few years I can live blaming a wild and crazy anteater.

Days, weeks, months passed, and I was still not satisfied that it was a natural occurrence, so I googled my problem.

I read an article written by a Ph.D documenting how many of his patients were around 13 years old; criticizing them all for coming from middle class backgrounds, having good neighbors, many having privileges including traveling with material goods and lots of social opportunities etc etc etc.

Good grievance Charlie Brown: At 13 I couldn’t tell anyone if I was from a middle class family or how wealthy I was and if I had good neighbors. My trips included a backyard tent.

Jumping beyond the definition of a typical 13 year old, I read that many of the changes, both physical and emotional, can be attributed to:

the frontal lobes of their brains are not yet fully developed. They tend to be less impulsive, more reflective, more able to learn from experience, and require less monitoring from adults.

This could explain why I was called to the assistant principal’s office and told that my son had been pulled from class because, after being told by a substitute teacher, that she didn’t like his attitude; he, without hesitation, replied that he didn’t like her attitude either.

He couldn’t leave it in the hands of the administrative Wolves. I would stand in the line of fire and take the smoke. I admitted that my son, over the last month, had repeatedly heard the exact same comment at home and I can only imagine that he was just imitating his mother.

I wonder if this frontal lobe is related to the deeper description your father gave at the beginning of all this.

Personal note: measure the circumference of my son’s head, weekly.

He had been a master of creating science projects, introducing us to the Komodo dragon, the migration of the African elephant, polar bears, the entire history of Canadian politics, and the learning disabilities of right-brained students in a class with left brain. room. (The school administration found no humor in his project, but could not present any arguments to dismiss his findings.)

Now, his favorite topic of conversation is the Sloth.

Oh breed, I google the sloth.

On the screen appeared an image of an animal with long hair, short legs and long claws hanging from the branch of a tree defined as lazy, inactive, slow, lethargic, carefree and indifferent.

Well, that sums up the physical and mental characteristics of my son, a sloth.

I no longer ask where the seven plates have disappeared: I retrieve them every Sunday when I go into his room. I don’t ask why the socks full of water bottles are hanging from the trees: they’ll fall off in the next windstorm or, where’s the missing duct tape, I know I’ll find it, wrapped around something he has. created and solved will change the world – where is the cat?

I no longer get excited when he and his friends are camping in the backyard, not having the sense to leave the tent when lightning strikes next to the fir tree, under which his tent is. I stand on my guard, holding the door open as her screams are in an octave very similar to his cousins’ as they enter the house.

I managed to convince myself that purple hair wasn’t a good color for him and if we go down for piercings, I’ll be the one to pick out his earrings.

I conceded that, like it or not, this stranger, who lived inside my son’s body, would remain in our home for years to come. I noted down the possible release date to make sure my son was in the right line for parts replacement at the end of the puberty visit. I met with my son, outlined the ground rules of our operation for the next few years, gave him his deadline and agreed; for the next few years, so as not to embarrass him, my safety net and I would follow him at a respectable distance.

Earlier these years I became aware of all the advertising on TV, radio, and all over grocery store counters, all focused on the generation suffering from temporary frontal lobe disorder, how their lives would be so much better. if only they consumed a variety of products. Products that burst with colors, fireworks and happiness when you open the box. The once opened bottles with all their sparkle and fizz promised to take you leaps and bounds far beyond any Disney vision. I got addicted to seeing a crane-sized, short-legged, colorful pitcher (not part of nature’s rainbow) jumping up and down, under sunny skies, running across the lawn, with all the kids from the neighborhood chasing them, exploding through walls. , all to reach a pool-sized tub of ice cubes. I’ve seen this before, oh yeah, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

At a safe distance, for years to come, we agreed that the colors we put on our table, if not provided by nature, were few and far between. I wasn’t going to completely deny the joys of adolescence, so when the glitter, fizz and all the goodies inside the pressurized bags exploded, we made sure the rise and fall were all in the safety of a backyard to kids test.

Our home has now celebrated its seventh anniversary with Puberty. Thank God, all early indications are that my son had arrived on time and was in the right line to begin the process of returning the beneficial parts to his frontal lobe.

When I go ahead like this and I think the last of the parts is in; His father quickly reminds me that signs of sanity and sensitivity are rare and that I should not count on this condition to continue, consider it a trick.

Having just said this, my son gets up to announce that he will not be able to attend classes today; he has a cold. From what you might ask, good question: falling into the frozen pond after bouncing off the ice until it split open.

So, I get up from the kitchen table and retrieve my safety net and my anxiety pills.

Maybe I should learn to enjoy the Newspaper more.