UNABASHED MALE ADOLESCENT FUN

THESE GUYS ARE NOT TERRORISTS.

They're just three young teenagers out to have some innocent fun.

A couple of weekends ago, on an unbelievably frigid early October Saturday morning, my son (on the left above, his friend Alex on the right) asked if I could "drive some of the guys out to paintballing."

The father who was scheduled to drive had some car trouble. I figure all parents have to chip in, so I said sure. It was only later I found out that the paintball place was an hour outside the city I live in.

So it ended up taking my entire afternoon, but I'm glad it turned out that way. Because I was able to witness my son having the same innocent kind of fun I had as a kid, when I played guns all the time.

I realize this is politically incorrect now.

In some people's minds.

And that there a lot of PC people out there who may be shuddering in horror at the thought I would let my son participate in an activity that involved TRYING to shoot his friends.

But these are GOOD kids. They aren't out to blow up skyscrapers or shoot their schoolmates to death. They just want to have some fun. And (gasp!), you know what?

For a 14-year-old male, shooting things harmlessly is FUN.

And I want my son to have fun with his friends in activities I know about, can think about and approve of. In this case, the activity was something a bunch of visiting German exchange students begged their hosts to do.

So we did it (well, not me, I just drove and froze, but I sure wouldn't have minded).

I got a chance to get to know of my son's friends better, to be part of their lives for a couple of hours, and show my son and his friends that he meant a lot to me and the friendship he shared with them meant a lot to me.

And here's the proof that fun was had by all.

R.R.I.P.

So my teen-aged son, in a bone-headed early career step on his way to becoming the world's next mega-star lead singer, loses the one pick I found for him to allow him to practise on my guitar.

First it falls into the acoustic guitar. I instruct him to turn the instrument upside down and shake it all around until the pick falls out.

He does that, the pick falls out, but he can't find it. It's gone. Then he drops the guitar on the floor.

I'm thinking can I be like The Who's Peter Townsend and bash it over his head?

I don't.

He's leaving in an hour for a band practice/sleepover at his friend Alex's place. He's in a "pick panic." I'm in a "Don't murder him just yet" dynamic.

They haven't even played a song yet far as I know, but they already have a name for their band: Final Crisis. I'm sending him a not too subtle message that this may be HIS final crisis.

I regain my composure. I start searching for the bag with the other picks I know I have in my apartment. Sift through the drawers. Check out my "junk I can't throw out" container.

Rustle through closets, empty storage boxes, go through the cabinet thingy where I keep all my books, board games, 18 sets of cards, cribbage boards and atlases, etc.

I notice a theme here. I can't find the damn picks, but I sure am finding a lot of remotes. TV remotes, VCR remotes, CD player remotes, generic replacements for those dead remotes.

At the end of it all, I find a total of 12 remotes, all past their prime or at least long ago left on my own personal scrap heap of technology. Gasp. It's a veritable Requiem for Remotes, a Testament to TV, and more.

Back to my son for a brief moment. I did find the bag of picks in my guitar case and he was able to get away for his gig with Final Crisis, although I have urged him to reconsider that name with his band mates.

I'm sure when he returns none of the five picks I found for him will return with him. But at least he can't say I didn't supply him with everything he needed when he left here.

But these remotes...there's something eerily strange about seeing them all bunched together, passed by, discharged of their duties, made obsolete by the purchase of other TVs or CD players or because they didn't work any more.

Just lying around, forgotten...no warm hands holding them, no thumbs pressing their up and down channel buttons, their mute controls, their on-off switches. They're dead, but they're still with me.

They haven't had a proper burial.

So I've lined them up next to each other.

I'm singing Amazing Grace.

May the Remotes Rest In Peace.

Daughters and Fathers and (eek) Kissing on the Lips

I WONDER SOMETIMES NOW WHETHER MY 18-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER SEES ME AS THIS...

Instead of this.

All through the early years, my daughter hugged me and hung on to me and asked me to swing her around like a rag-doll on a wild airplane ride and throw her up in the air to do flips into the lake and, yes, she always kissed me on the lips.

When she was this old...

And this old...

And even this old.

But now that she's THIS old... She won't kiss me on the lips any more.

No, just like kissing my sisters, now she turns her cheek and lets me kiss her THERE. There's still hugs, there's still kidding around, there's still me tickling her all the time to get her going...but her lips appear to be off-limits.

So I just wonder what this is all about.

I ask her in a teasing way. She just rolls her eyes. "Oh, Dad!"

Have my lips turned to sandpaper?

No, at least not according to women I DO kiss on the lips.

Maybe there's a women's code or a time-sensitive DNA thingy that scientists or all the love experts haven't discovered yet that kicks in at age 16 or 18 (YOU CAN'T KISS YOUR DAD ON THE LIPS ANY MORE!)

More likely, I think it coincides with whenever girls or young women get involved with their first serious squeeze.

Women get most of their life-long impressions about males from their fathers, I think that's pretty much established and sensible. And women LOVE kissing and hugging. Men, not so much, or so I've been told.

So maybe it's all about fathers serving as that guinea pig, in a sense, for their daughters until they figure they've got it pretty much down pat and now they need to go practise on the real thing. Or maybe it's just their time to fly away to Venus, leaving us dads on Mars?

Me? I's just rollin' with the punches on this one and making jokes about it with her.

But I do ask my legion of female visitors for their thoughts on this. Do they remember, as hot teen babes focusing on snaring a man, leaving their poor dads in the dust as far as lip-kissing goes and when they felt it became unfashionable to do so, and why?

And for male readers, if you so choose: what are your thoughts, if any?

INFORMAL POLL FOLLOWUP: The nays have it, by far. Most women say they rarely did and now never do kiss their dads on the lips. I'll never hear the end of it from my daughter...

UNDER THE WEATHER...

DOCTOR, DOCTOR...

(No, make that, "Nurse, Nurse...")

I never get sick, but...well, I'm sick. With a flu.

Or a code.

Or something.

So I'll be back as soon as I am able and I apologize for not getting out much to visit you this week.

In the meantime, pardon me while I lay me down to sleep...