<p>Is anyone else’s child trying to reinvent him or herself the summer before leaving for college? My S – a pencil-thin, lifelong, self-described nerd whose great loves are political blogs, video games, newspapers, books, classical music, English tea and sleeping in – has suddenly become interested in doing things that, well, frankly, he’s either always hated or never even attempted before because he couldn’t see the point. </p>
<p>First, it was a camping trip planned with some buddies. Two days at a hot, dusty, rustic campground with a tent and a Coleman stove. Then it was joining a gym(!!). Not just joining it, but rising at 5:30 a.m. one morning last week and taking the city bus to work out at 6 a.m. with another buddy. (He said he tried to do a push up and his chest “collapsed,” so he’s begun using weights). This is a kid who would sneak read every day at the gym for two years during independent study PE in high school. We begged him to work out, to get some kind of exercise more strenuous than walking from the computer chair to the refrigerator, but he always refused. </p>
<p>Finally, today he left this note for me: </p>
<p>Mom,
P and B picked me up to play basketball somewhere on the west end… why basketball? I have no idea. Anyway, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.
– B</p>
<p>I love that he’s doing physical, outdoor activities for the first time in nearly 18 years, but it’s sort of freaking me out. Basketball???!! Who is this kid? And can I soon expect him to become a neat freak or use table manners as well?</p>
<p>A sudden and intense interest in physical improvement is a hallmark of late male puberty. That’s been my obvervation. Last night, S2 and two best friends, all 17 1/2, stopped in the family room to have a “pull-up contest” on the pull-up bar outside the porch door. Nevermind that it was freezing outside and one othe boys is 50 pounds lighter than the others. There was testosterone everywhere! Even DH gave it a go (last place).</p>
<p>Yes this stuff happens. Mine who never reas anything but the ESPN web page suddenly started reading novels. Of course he still wouldn’t get up before noon for anything but money.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to say the boy is lazy but I think the only reason he bathes is so he won’t have to carry dirt around.</p>
<p>Momof2: just graduating from high school can do strange things to people, although immediately turning into a neat freak with table manners might not be in the cards. If you think he’s different now, wait till you see him after 6 months or a year in a college dorm, away from you and DH and any other parents. But it’s unpredictable exactly in which direction or directions he will go.</p>
<p>My GOD, I love this cafe. I feel so bad for all you parents!</p>
<p>I’m a 20 year old female, and if this is what I have to look foward to someday, count me in!</p>
<p>Momof2inca, I honestly wouldn’t worry. My guy friends do things like that all the time, and just the year before they only had one great love: Russian literature.</p>
<p>Don’t ask. Please.</p>
<p>Anyway, I send out courage and youthful smiles! Hopefully it will help!</p>
<p>That’s obvious –> because Russian literature is always so tragic, probably because it’s so cold there the authors had no choice. Tragic is the only thing the Russians can do. Every youth goes through a tragic literature/sad song phase.</p>
<p>Don’t worry, it’s just a disease, lasts about two, at most three months, and it will pass. (There’s a wonderfully awful 19th century Russian novel by Ivan Goncharov called “Oblomov” in which the protagonist stays in bed for the first 186 pages. ;))</p>
<p>Oh, thanks, everyone. Guess it’s sort of normal. I didn’t think S could genuinely surprise me before he left home (of course, I’m expecting changes from him while he’s at college). I thought I really <em>knew</em> this kid. Silly me!</p>
<p>Hey there Mom of son soon to be departing. Are you sure that you don’t also have a mild case of the disease??? Well if you don’t you surely will come the last two weeks of August…son looking more like the little boy you remember, needing to hold on longer during the last hugs, feeling a bit tearful at the whole idea of him being gone…perhaps far away. Be watchful for it could happen to you. This phase follows the i want to kick this kid, who is this kid phase that you are in now!!!</p>
<p>Um…maybe it passes with girls, but boys seem to stick with The Buffing Phase for some years. Not only that, they tend to add The Preening Phase when they envision the possiblity of real live girlfriends.</p>
<p>Card-carrying dirtballs suddenly visit the shower once, twice, even three times a day. Wafts of aftershave cloud the hallway as they leave the house–rather a different smell than that familiar sour-shoe stink.</p>
<p>Moms change too. After a few years of The Buffing and Preening Phases, I looked at my fully bearded, full grown, world-travelled, sleep till two S1 and had this visceral, evolutionary reaction: “Who is this MAN living in my house and why hasn’t he deposited a paycheck into my account?”</p>
<p>Just wait until they actually GET to college! My son, who had refused to wear anything but shorts and hawaiian shirts for six years (one reason we sent him to HS in Hawaii), suddenly demanded a SUIT. A suit that he wears when he goes out to dinner with his friends.</p>
<p>I thought it was just Boston, but… when we went out to dinner recently, he actually asked me whether he needed to wear a tie. This is Seattle, where an ironed shirt is a big deal. The last time my HUSBAND wore a tie was for a friend’s son bar mitzvah three years ago.</p>
<p>I like the description of the Buffing and Preening phases! Certainly matches what I’ve seen.</p>
<p>Packed for S. Put in aftershave, shaving cream, but forgot the razor. “Don’t worry, mom, I have no intention of shaving.”
Bring on the Buffing and Preening phases, there are only 2 more months before college.</p>
<p>We haven’t broken down and bought a suit yet. I have trouble persuading S to wear Khakis! Fuggedabout button-down shirts. On top of that, his Physics prof (who is also a House Master) showed up for classes last September in shorts, T-shirt and sandals.</p>
<p>I showed up for college with a three-piece, deep forest green, wool-worsted suit, blue button-down cotton broadcloth shirt, and knitted tie, with WildRoot Cream Oil for my hair, and Brut (which spilled out all over my luggage.) Oh, and shined pennyloafers. We had jacket-and-tie sitdown dinner four times a week. The suit got lots of wear.</p>
<p>After four years at my august institution, I had tangerine and green chalkstriped bellbottom pants, with a lime green shirt half-open down the front, a multicolored (most blue and orange) paisley silk rag tied to beltloop, sandals, hair down to mid back, and when the occasion called for a tie, I wore a copy of Barry McQuire’s “Eve of Destruction” around my neck attached to a thong. </p>
<p>I was an honors student! (When I returned from Oxford, two years later, all of my clothes, other than winter jacket, were pure white. Stayed with the white period for another two years. I’m currently into gray.)</p>
<p>Mini—Great visual and olfactory images. The smell of Brut wafted through the room as I read your descriptions. Do you have a photo of any of the three outfits? And if so, have your children seen them? (And doesn’t the pure white phase correspond with the cover of Abbey Road, or am I mistaken?)</p>
<p>You could’ve stopped that description after the bellbottoms. I almost cried laughing.</p>
<p>That is so very amusing. But yay for grey and white! I did the black phase for a while (about 4 years) and I’m just beginning to move onto lighter colors (much to the relief of my parents, who were convinced I’d join Charles Manson’s outcasts and go on a killing spree or something).</p>
<p>Anyway, please! Regale us with more tales! I was howling with mirth.</p>
(When I returned from Oxford, two years later, all of my clothes, other than winter jacket, were pure white. Stayed with the white period for another two years. I’m currently into gray.)</p>