Reader Alert

This is the last section; like the first one, it’s mostly family stuff. It includes a column I wrote when my son got hit by a car, which was very scary; and one about his reaching adolescence, which veteran parents have assured me will be even scarier. There is also some important advice in here for young people, who represent our nation’s Hope for the Future. I myself plan to be dead.

The Old-Timers Game

My son got his ear pierced. He’s 12. For 12 years I worked hard to prevent him from developing unnatural bodily holes, then he went out and got one on purpose. At a shopping mall. It turns out that minors can have their earlobes assaulted with sharp implements by shopping-mall-booth personnel who, for all we know, have received no more formal medical training than is given to burrito folders at Taco Bell. And the failed Clinton administration is doing nothing.

You’re probably saying: “Don’t blame the government! As a parent, YOU must take responsibility! You and your wife, Beth, should sit your son down and give him a stern reprimand.”

Listen, that’s a great idea, except for one teensy little problem, which is that BETH IS THE PERSON WHO DROVE HIM TO THE PIERCING PLACE. This is the same woman who, when Rob was 6, allowed him to get a “punk” style haircut that transformed him in just a few minutes from Christopher Robin into Bart Simpson; the same woman who indulges his taste for clothes that appear to have been dyed in radioactive Kool-Aid.

No, Beth is not on my side in the ongoing battle I have waged with my son to keep him normal, defined as “like me, but with less nose hair.”

Now you’re probably saying: “Who are YOU to be complaining? When you were young, didn’t YOU feel you had the right to do things that your parents disapproved of?” Perhaps you are referring to the time in ninth grade when Phil Grant, Tom Parker, and I decided that pipe-smoking was cool, so we got hold of some pipes and stood around spewing smoke, thinking we looked like urbane sophisticates, when in fact we looked like the Junior Fred MacMurray Dork Patrol. I will admit that when my parents found out about this (following a minor desk fire in my room) and told me to stop, I went into a week long door-slamming snit, as though the right of ninth graders to smoke pipes was explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution.

But we cannot compare these two situations. In the case of my pipe-smoking, my parents were clearly overreacting, because the worst that could have happened was that I would have burned the house down and got cancer. Whereas I have a very good reason to object to Rob’s earlobe hole: It makes me feel old. Rob wears a little jeweled ear stud, and it’s constantly winking at me and saying: “Hey there, old-timer! YOU’D never wear an ear stud! And neither would Grandpa Walton!”

I am also being rapidly aged by Rob’s choice of radio stations. The one he now prefers is operated by one of the most dangerous and irresponsible forces on Earth, college students. I was concerned about what they might be playing, so I tuned it in on my car radio. The first song I heard didn’t sound so bad, and I said to myself. “Hey! Perhaps I am still fairly hip after all!” And then the deejay came on and said, apologetically: “I realize that song was mainstream.” He said “mainstream” the way you would say “composed by Phoenicians.” Then he played a song entitled—I am not making this up—”Detachable Penis.”

Yes, college students are in on the plot with my son to make me feel old. Not long ago I was sitting on a beach near a group of male college students who were talking about a bungee-jumping excursion they had taken. They were bragging about the fact that they had leaped off the tower in the only cool way, which is headfirst and backward. They spoke with great contempt about a group of fathers—that’s the term they used, “fathers,” making it sound as though it means “people even older than Phoenicians”—who had jumped off feet-first, which the college students considered to be pathetic.

This made me feel extremely old, because I personally would not bungee-jump off the Oxford English Dictionary. My son, on the other hand, would unhesitatingly bungee-jump off the Concorde. And he’s only 12. Who KNOWS how old he’ll make me feel by the time he’s 14. What if he wants a nose ring? I won’t allow it! I’m going to put my foot down! I’m going to take charge!

I’m going to steal Beth’s car keys.

Breaking The Ice

As a mature adult, I feel an obligation to help the younger generation, just as the mother fish guards her unhatched eggs, keeping her lonely vigil day after day, never leaving her post, not even to go to the bathroom, until her tiny babies emerge and she is able, at last, to eat them. “She may be your mom, but she’s still a fish” is a wisdom nugget that I would pass along to any fish eggs reading this column.

But today I want to talk about dating. This subject was raised in a letter to me from a young person named Eric Knott, who writes:

I have got a big problem. There’s this girl in my English class who is really good-looking. However, I don’t think she knows I exist. I want to ask her out, but I’m afraid she will say no, and I will be the freak of the week. What should I do?

Eric, you have sent your question to the right mature adult, because as a young person I spent a lot of time thinking about this very problem. Starting in about eighth grade, my time was divided as follows:

Academic Pursuits: 2 percent. Zits: 16 percent. Trying to Figure Out How to Ask Girls Out: 82 percent.

The most sensible way to ask a girl out is to walk directly up to her on foot and say, “So, you want to go out? Or what?” I never did this. I knew, as Eric Knott knows, that there was always the possibility that the girl would say no, thereby leaving me with no viable option but to leave Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School forever and go into the woods and become a bark-eating hermit whose only companions would be the gentle and understanding woodland creatures.

“Hey, ZITFACE!” the woodland creatures would shriek in cute little Chip ‘n’ Dale voices while raining acorns down upon my head. “You wanna DATE? HAHAHAHAHAHA.”

So the first rule of dating is: Never risk direct contact with the girl in question. Your role model should be the nuclear submarine, gliding silently beneath the ocean surface, tracking an enemy target that does not even begin to suspect that the submarine would like to date it. I spent the vast majority of 1960 keeping a girl named Judy under surveillance, maintaining a minimum distance of 50 lockers to avoid the danger that I might somehow get into a conversation with her, which could have led to disaster:

JUDY: Hi. ME: Hi. JUDY: JUST in case you have ever thought about having a date with me, the answer is no. WOODLAND CREATURES: HAHAHAHA.

The only problem with the nuclear-submarine technique is that it’s difficult to get a date with a girl who has never, technically, been asked. This is why you need Phil Grant. Phil was a friend of mine who had the ability to talk to girls. It was a mysterious superhuman power he had, comparable to X-ray vision. So, after several thousand hours of intense discussion and planning with me, Phil approached a girl he knew named Nancy, who approached a girl named Sandy, who was a direct personal friend of Judy’s and who passed the word back to Phil via Nancy that Judy would be willing to go on a date with me. This procedure protected me from direct humiliation, similar to the way President Reagan was protected from direct involvement in the Iran-contra scandal by a complex White House chain of command that at one point, investigators now believe, included his horse.