On 2005-12-09 10:02:00, famjaztique wrote:
I should probably be on a different forum, but I think the reason I prefer this one is because many of you were that same teen. I rebelled too, but when I got caught, I would give it a rest for a while, you know?
:rofl: :rofl: Yes! That probably would have been me if I had stayed in public school. Maybe not. Maybe there would have been some adult on campus who I deemed worthy of my respect; who honored their agreements and who was not so arrogant as to continually and sorely tempt me to knock them down a peg. Just guessing, of course, but for the sake of argument, let's entertain (w/o accepting) the notion that your son does think quite a lot like I did when I was around the same age.
My mother (who was raised Catholic in a German neighborhood--hearing things like "raising children is like training dogs--discipline, discipline, discipline!) simply could not understand my strange behavior. For example, I'd study hard in one class, even though the teacher was a strict disciplinarian and the course work didn't come easy to me. And I'd be proud of achieving a low B from good old Feisty Jim Meisty. Next hour, I had Mr. Doctor, who I'd
swear was overdosed on Thorazine or something. And I'd flat refuse to do anything but constantly punk him out and humiliate him. Then there was the other idiot, who week after week, never noticed that I'd casually stood up and walked out w/ the Student Council till I was halfway down the hallway.
The mysterious secret? Seemed obvious to me then and still does, but it was absolutely beyound some adults' understanding or my ability to articulate.
Some adults earned and returned my respect, others were just power trippin little tin gods who thought we owed them respect just for their having sucked wind for a certain number of years.
Sounds to me asif your son respects you (most of the time) but, perversely (these days, anyway) doesn't automatically defer to any arbitrary rules or arrangements. And maybe he just loves this friend and would rather spend time w/ them than w/ whomever he finds himself with at any given moment?
I dunno, it's all speculation from my standpoint. Just food for thought.
science is the record of dead religions.
--Oscar Wilde