Saratoga News

Columns

Where is he going? Up to pick up his college diploma

By Dick Sparrer

Where are you going my little one, little one; where are you going my baby, my own; turn around and you're 2, turn around and you're 4, turn around and you're a young boy, going out of the door.

I knew it was coming. Heck, I had to pay a couple of hundred bucks for the graduation announcements. What I wasn't prepared for, though, was how I was going to feel when it hit me that my youngest son would be graduating from college.

I guess it just doesn't seem all that long ago that he was using the Benjamin Moore semi-gloss to paint the inside of the garage door. And then there was the time he pulled the sprinkler into the family room (yes, it was hooked to the hose ... and yes, the water was on).

And now I'm sending him out into the world as a future leader of our nation? It's a scary thought.

Fine, it's not really scary. He's an outstanding, responsible young man with much to offer (just in case anyone with a job offer is reading). It's just that, as parents, we remember those little things in life, those special moments. And we wonder thoughtfully to ourselves, "How the hell is this kid ever going to make it in the real world!"

Turn around, turn around, turn around and you're a young boy, going out of the door.

Responsible? Well, not always. There was the time I wrote:

"Tae Kwon Do. It's one of the classic forms of the East Asian martial arts. It requires discipline, endurance ... and pants.

Now, I wasn't sure if the 12-year-old had either of the first two qualities, but I knew he didn't have the third. And according to him, if he went back to his next Tae Kwon Do lesson without them, he would be subject to some ancient East Asian torture.

It all started when he signed up for this after-school Tae Kwon Do class. Sometime after his second lesson and before his third, his pants vanished. So he told us he needed a new pair before he could go back to the class ... and he told us at 9:30 p.m. the night before.

Ever try to find a 24-hour martial arts supply store? Ever try to find a martial arts ghi at 9:30 p.m. on a weekday night? We're not talking sweats or bicycle shorts here ... we're talking ghi. Impossible.

So after just two lessons, his martial arts career had come to an end--and I was out the non-refundable $54 registration fee."

Responsible? Not that time. But it wasn't always his fault:

" 'He needs a what?' I had barely walked in the door after a long day's work when my wife bellowed the greeting ... if you could call it that.

I hadn't even been in the house long enough to check the cupboards for some sort of snack the kids might have overlooked or to check the mail for the million dollar check from the Publisher's Clearing House when my wife said, not 'Hello honey, how was your day?' or 'Hi sweetie, guess what I made you for dinner!', but 'Kevin needs a pitchfork.'

'A pitchfork?' I couldn't believe my ears. What's this crazy woman talking about?

'Yes, a pitchfork!' she said with a certain displeasure in voice, as if I was the one not making sense. 'How do you expect him to look like a devil in the elementary school parade tomorrow without a pitchfork?'

Oh, now it was starting to make some sense. It was Halloween eve. Kevin was going to be a devil, and my wife figured he needed a pitchfork to pull off the disguise. I knew better (flashback to painting the inside of the garage door, and the sprinkler in the family room)."

Turn around and you're tiny, turn around and you're grown, turn around and you're a young man, going out on your own.

Communication will be a key to his success as an adult. Oh, we can converse now, but that wasn't always the case:

"question (kwes'chen), n. 1. a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.

answer (an'ser), n. 1. a reply, as to a question.

Two very simple words, right? For adults maybe, but not for kids--at least, not for my son Kevin.

I guess those are two words no longer covered in middle school and high school vocabulary lessons. Or if they are, he must have been absent that day.

It's all very simple really ... ask a question, get an answer. It's just that the answer from a teenager hardly ever answers the question asked by the adult.

Kevin's favorite evasive responses are 'I don't know,' 'whatever' and 'don't worry about it.' And the beauty of the three replies is that one is perfect for any question a parent might ask.

For example, this conservation came up with Kevin at 10 p.m. the other night when we discovered that he had found time for video games and cartoons, but not his homework.

Question: 'Kevin, why didn't you do your homework.'

Answer: 'I don't know.' (Brilliant response, Kevin.)

Question: 'When did you think you were going to get it done?'

Answer: 'I don't know.' (There it is again.)

Question: 'How can you not know!?!'

Answer: 'I don't know.'

See how good he is at it? One response was perfect for any question we could have asked. Of course, you have to remember that we're dealing with an expert here. How could we, as mere parents, expect to pry any information from a teenager--especially one who's learned from the master ... his older brother!"

With a vocabulary like that, he could wind up in politics someday. Of course, as a proud father bustin' the buttons of his Tommy Bahama floral print shirt, I know that he can accomplish anything he puts his mind to. He's persevered and finished college, despite some pretty tough emotional odds. His mother died about two years into his college life, and two years later his father remarried. It had to be pretty difficult to concentrate on his English lit classes with all of that emotion rattling around in his head. It's certainly more than any 20-year-old college kid should have to deal with. But he did, and to his credit he handled it all with the maturity and dignity that his mother and I could have only hoped that he would attain.

It's difficult for me to express how proud I am of Kevin as he prepares to walk in Saturday's graduation ceremony at San José State University. But I think that the highest praise that I could heap on him this Saturday is this: You're mother is very proud of you today.

Where are you going my baby, my own.