13 Is the New 18

by Beth J. Harpaz

  This book is dedicated to my boys

  Contents

  PROLOGUE: A LETTER TO THE READER

  Unjumpable Son

  Are We There Yet?

  Your Boxers Are Showing

  Consulting the Experts

  Another Call from School

  The Eighth-Grade Prom

  Contraband

  The Mysteries of Girls

  Epiphanies

  The Secret Lives of Teenagers

  Getting to Know You

  Good-bye Thirteen, Hello Fourteen, Hello Hope

  Meditations on the Past and Future

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Dear Reader,

  If your child has already turned eight, nine, or ten, then you've long been done with diapers, bottles, and sippy cups, toilet training and tantrums. By now your child can read and multiply, swim and ride a two- wheeler, and manage OK without you in most everyday tasks.

  The highlights of your child's life are simple, but wonderful in their simplicity: scoring a goal in soccer. Staying up late on a sleepover. Being tall enough to ride a big roller coaster. Seeing a movie the day it opens. Pigging out on Halloween candy. Winning at Monopoly. Blowing a perfect bubble with a piece of gum.

  And while it's only recently that your child has stopped believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, he's young enough that deep down inside, he still holds on to a shred of hope that they might actually be real. He just doesn't want to admit it.

  Enjoy this time, dear reader. Because soon your golden child will turn eleven, twelve … and then thirteen. And then one day, all of a sudden, none of those things that used to make him happy will matter.

  He will grow tall in the night and nothing will fit in the morning. Strange smells will emanate from his shoes, his body, and his room. He will get in trouble and people will blame you. He will admire celebrities who scare you. You will find yourself screaming things your mother screamed at you, and he will tune you out with ear buds and tiny glowing screens. You've been dreaming of the day, ever since he was born, that he would allow you to sleep past dawn, but now it will take a bagpipe band to rouse him before lunch.

  He will have nothing but disdain for Santa and the Tooth Fairy, but he will believe that you are obligated to provide presents and money whenever he asks, and he will be outraged when you say no. He will spend huge sums of cash on things you don't understand, like texting and downloading music, and if you should ever read those text messages or hear those songs, you will want to kill yourself. And his sneakers will cost more than your first semester of college.

  He may also do dangerous things, stupid things, and possibly even illegal things. And even if he isn't doing them, you will drive yourself insane wondering if he is. He will abhor the sound of your voice, the sight of your face, and the ways of your family, which used to be his family, before he decided to pretend that he is no longer related to you. From now on, in fact, he will do everything he can to avoid you, including gluing his cell phone to his ear, but not answering it when you call.

  Perhaps you think of yourself as someone who has kept up with trends, who is not out of touch despite the fact that you were born sometime in the last century and now spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to hide that roll of fat around your waist and your gray hair (or lack of hair).

  Your own parents probably grew up during the Great Depression or World War II, so it was no surprise that there was a generation gap when you were a teenager. But you never anticipated you would have a generation gap with your own child.

  After all, you listened to music with degenerate lyrics! You drank before you were legally old enough! Maybe you even smoked pot and had what is almost never referred to these days as premarital sex. Not that you want your child to do any of these things before, say, the age of twenty- nine, but maybe you thought you could use your accumulated wisdom to do a better job understanding and guiding your teenager than your parents did with you.

  Well, as a parent, you may still be useful for a few things, like doing the laundry and providing transportation. But other than that, to a thirteen- year- old, you are nothing but old and old- fashioned. Your accumulated wisdom is boring; your efforts to keep up with technology are a joke; and even your wardrobe is embarrassing.

  Does all this scare you? It should. Read on, and hear my story. You see, dear reader, things have changed since you were thirteen. Childhood doesn't fade away with the onset of puberty; now it disappears all at once. Thirteen is the new eighteen, and nothing in your own adolescence can prepare you for this moment. Soon you will be the shortest person in your house and your taste in music will be despised. That kid who just a few years ago wouldn't leave you alone long enough to drink a cup of coffee before it got cold now can't bear to spend five minutes in your presence.

  But there's nothing you can do about any of this, so accept your fate. Get your own iPod, beg your kid to help you download some Bruce Springsteen, and try to find the humor in it all.

  Sincerely,

  The Mother of Taz

  he phone rings. My husband, Elon, answers it.

  “It's a girl!” he says, sounding panicky.

  We have two sons, and if it's a girl, then it must be for Taz, the one who's just turned thirteen. His little brother, Sport, is only eight, and doesn't yet acknowledge that girls exist.

  “Taz, phone!” I yell down the hall toward his room.

  Taz comes out and takes the receiver from his father. “Hello? Oh hi, Greg.”

  I look at Elon. “Greg is not a girl,” I say.

  “OK,” he says. “I didn't know.”

  It's an honest mistake. You see, thirteen- year- old boys come in two distinct sizes: little ones who sound like they swallowed helium, and big ones with low voices who can empty a crowded room just by removing one enormous, smelly sneaker.

  The phone call was from one of the little ones, but our son is one of the big ones. He wears size- eleven sneakers, curses like a rapper, and inhales a foot- long sandwich in four bites. When you call his cell phone, you get a message from before his voice got deep— a Munchkin- like “Yo, whaddup, it's Taz!”— but if he deigns to call you back, you think you're talking to Johnny Cash.

  His tastes are surprisingly grown- up, too, considering that just a few months ago he thought he was living large if I allowed a bottle of soda in the house. But nowadays, his drink of choice isn't Coke. It's Starbucks Frappuccino.

  “Coffee?” I shrieked when I first learned of his love of iced lattes and caramel macchiatos (whatever those are). “My thirteen- year- old is hooked on coffee?”

  But then I remembered when I was in eighth grade, I took No- Doz to get through social studies class. (Ugh, those Federalist Papers were SOOOO boring!) If coffee had tasted as good then as it does now, I probably would have ditched the No- Doz for lattes, too.

  Either way, Taz— like a lot of thirteen- year- olds— is a discriminating consumer. He likes salad, but only the baby spring mix. He likes sushi, but only cucumber rolls. (The thought of raw fish horrifies him.) And he likes spicy food— the more jalapeños, the better.

  When I was a kid, I'd like to point out, spicy food did not exist (unless you count curried chicken in cream sauce, made from a recipe in Ladies’ Home Journal). And the only place you could get Mexican food was Mexico. In contrast, Taz, like other kids who frequent Taco Bell or the local taqueria, knows the difference between burritos, tacos, tortillas, and quesadillas the way I knew my way around Fudgsicles, Creamsicles, and Eskimo Pies. It's no accident that Taz's namesake, the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character, is a teenage animal, known for his hearty appetite (not to mention his weakness for pretty Devil girls).

  My Taz is also big on brands. He likes North Face. Tim
berland. Nike and Jordans. But knowing trademarks from generics is not just about clothes— it's about all kinds of products.

  For example, one day when I'm headed to the drugstore, he asks me to buy Axe.

  I am so proud of myself— I know what Axe is!

  Well, actually another mom tipped me off— it's a deodorant popular among adolescent boys.

  But I am not prepared for the ninety- nine varieties of Axe at the drugstore— row after row. They're all packaged in black dispensers with silver lettering, like some Vegas hotel room from the seventies. They have names like Adrenalin, Apollo, Phoenix, Kilo, and Tsunami. They come in body spray, deodorant sticks, shower gel. It's all very confusing to someone like me who has been buying the same brand of unscented Ban Roll- On since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

  At least I can rule out the aftershave (although a friend tells me that her son used aftershave for years before he actually started shaving). I shut my eyes and pull one can of Axe off the shelf, figuring that I am more likely to pick an acceptable scent by relying on the randomness of the universe than if I made a conscious decision based on what I think Taz will want, which would surely be wrong.

  I hand my selection to the cashier without examining it too closely, pay for it, and keep the receipt in case I need to make an exchange. I bring it home, give it to Taz, and wait for the verdict.

  “Is it OK?” I ask tentatively. “There were so many choices, I wasn't sure …”

  Taz nods. “Thanks,” he says. “Tsunami. This is good.”

  Hurray, I got the right kind of Axe! Even if it was sort of by accident. Maybe I'm not as out of touch as I had feared. I feel absurdly pleased with myself, the way I used to feel in high school if I happened to wear pink lip gloss or a velveteen blazer the same day that one of the Cool Girls did.

  But now the rest of us— Elon, our youngest son, Sport, and I— have to live with the smell of Axe, and some days I'm not so sure it's any better than body odor. Taz uses it more than regularly, spraying not just his body but also his clothes and even his room.

  It is a sickly sweet odor, strong and musky, like cheap incense, and it seeps out from under his closed door— his door is almost always closed— and into the hallway. There it creates a virtual mushroom cloud that eventually radiates into every corner of our small apartment. But the epicenter of the bomb zone is definitely traceable to his room.

  “Ugh, I can't stand that smell,” Elon says as he arrives home from work one day after a particularly powerful Axe detonation. Taz's room is right next to the front door, so eau de Axe always hits you hard the minute you step over the threshold. And when you first inhale it, you can't imagine how you're going to get on with your life, swallow your food, or concentrate on anything more complicated than watching TV.

  “Don't worry,” I tell Elon, “it's just the Axe. You'll get used to it. It's better than having our house smell like a locker room.”

  Indeed, as with most fumes that don't kill you, after a few minutes, your brain adjusts and it becomes less noticeable. Besides, it seems to have a half- life of about an hour. I suppose by then whatever was airborne has drifted to the floor, where we will absorb it through the soles of our feet for the rest of our lives. Come to think of it, maybe that's why Taz's sneakers don't smell quite as bad as some of his friends’.

  But Elon insists that something more nefarious is going on with Axe. He says it smells like cigarette smoke, maybe even like pot. Undoubtedly, the creators of Axe did this on purpose; it's probably why the deodorant is so popular with teenagers. If their parents tell them they smell like smoke, they can claim that it's Axe and not get in trouble.

  But at some point I am convinced that I am no longer smelling Axe, I really am smelling smoke.

  I blame myself for this, of course. If my child smells like cigarettes, it can only mean that I Am a Terrible Mother.

  I confront Taz about the smoke, and he denies, repeatedly and vociferously, that he has ever smoked a cigarette.

  This turns me into a Crazy Woman who skulks around the house sniffing everything, like a dog. I sniff his hair, his coat, his laundry, his backpack. I check out garbage cans for cigarette butts, look in drawers for I don't know what. Then one night I'm certain— certain, for once!— that I really do smell smoke as he walks in.

  I confront him again. He insists he was merely around others who were smoking.

  “Like secondhand smoke won't kill you?” I scream, following him into the living room as I launch into a litany of all the relatives whose smoking led to cancer and emphysema and other disgusting diseases, none of whom could be here today to recite the dangers of smoking because THEY ARE ALL DEAD!

  He turns away from me and sits down at the computer. But I'm on a roll now, and the lack of eye contact won't stop me from really getting into my rant.

  “Don't you remember how my aunt up in Maine used to cough and spit out all that stuff, and how she had that oxygen tube stuck in her nose, all because she smoked cigarettes?” I continue.

  He and his brother, Sport, really liked that aunt, despite the coughing and oxygen tubes, because she always bought them a big bag of barbecue potato chips any time she knew they were coming to visit. (It always amazes me how easy it is to win a kid over. You don't have to take them to Disney or buy them a Wii. You just have to be a reliable source of some really awful kind of junk food.)

  I have one last image in my arsenal to make my point. “Didn't I tell you that your grandfather had emphysema when he died, and how sad it is that he didn't live long enough to get to know you and your brother …” But here my voice trails off; I can't rant about that. It makes me too sad.

  Besides, I suddenly realize that Taz does not appear to have heard a word I've said. Instead of listening to me, he is sitting at the computer, instant- messaging forty- five of his closest friends simultaneously.

  No matter. I have a great windup for my speech, and I'm not giving up just because my audience couldn't care less. “And the next time you come home smelling like cigarettes, you can take all your clothes off outside the door, in front of the neighbors, because I don't want that stink in my house!”

  A friend of mine told me she knew another mother who'd gotten results with that line, so I figured I'd try it. And lo and behold, the threat of a public stripping grabs his attention.

  “OK,” he says, turning around for a moment to finally acknowledge my existence. “Calm down! Don't worry! I get it.”

  He turns back to the screen. I creep up and look over his shoulder. Now he's on his MySpace page, where no doubt he is being stalked by dozens of perverts. I remind myself silently that I Am a Terrible Mother.

  In the personal profile section of his MySpace entry he has written that he is twenty- two years old. Next to “favorite books,” he has written, “I hate books.” (Terrible Mother, Terrible Mother, TERRIBLE MOTHER!)

  For a photo of his alleged twenty- two- year- old self, he has posted a picture taken at Six Flags, in which he is standing next to Bugs Bunny.

  Music pulses softly from the computer speaker. He has figured out how to stitch some hip- hop into his MySpace page. Undoubtedly, that is in violation of the music industry's copyright laws, which means that his MySpace page is not only fraudulent because it misrepresents his age, but it is also illegal. The music starts with an ominous synthesized beat—ba, ba, ba, BA BA BA baaah, ba ba ba, BA BA BA baaah— and then I hear a thuglike voice chanting:

  This is why I'm HOT

  This is why I'm HOT.

  Suddenly, the IMs are flying.

  “WASSUP” reads a message.

  “NM,” he types in. “JC.”

  A few months back, I would have been trying to figure out why “New Mexico” and “Junior Cadets” were the appropriate responses to the question “What's up?” But by now I had done enough spying to know that “NM, JC” stands for “Nothin’ much, just chillin’.” (I also know OMG is “oh my God,” and LOL is “laugh out loud,” which makes a lot more sense
as a response to jokes than when I thought it stood for “lots of love.” I know WTF, too, but I'm too much of a lady to tell you what that means.)

  I glance at the screen name of Taz's correspondent. It's a girl. But just as I start to feel smug about my abilities as a MySpace Mata Hari, he senses me behind him and puts his hand over the screen.

  “Go away!” he shouts.

  “OK,” I say, and slowly back away. As I make my retreat, he starts flipping through a dozen other MySpace pages, and I recognize some of the photos. A few are kids from his middle school, and a few I actually recognize from his kindergarten class.

  But the boys look so large now, and sort of scary. They have … ugh, dark hair growing over their lips. They wear baseball caps with logos that look to me like gang symbols. They smirk. Stare. And scowl.

  The girls are even scarier, but for different reasons: They look grown- up and beautiful. They have long wavy hair and wear sexy little camisole tops, and they smile and flirt for the camera.

  An image pops into my mind of a photo of some of these kids from a birthday party when Taz was little. They were small and sweet then. They wore dopey little cone paper hats with elastic chin straps. My sister had painted cat's whiskers on their faces, and we'd made necklaces out of dried rigatoni and played Pin the Tail on the Monster, a creature I'd let them draw on a big piece of brown paper taped to the wall.

  In the photo I'm thinking of, Taz had his cheeks puckered, ready to blow out the candles on a cake I'd made. I remember that day felt like an important milestone. We were moving from tricycles to training wheels, from being a little boy to being just a kid. It seemed like a very big deal.

  Fast forward eight years to Taz's bar mitzvah, when he turned thirteen. He was wearing a suit and tie, and everyone at the party kept walking up to him saying, “Today you are a man!” in a fake deep voice and cracking up. But Elon and I didn't think it was so funny when we saw the way those eighth- grade girls in their high-heeled shoes were hanging all over him.