Beckett’s Last Mixtape – Chapter Five

Posted on January 22, 2024April 28, 2024

ANTHO

Judge Roberts looks like my father. This is not a good thing.

Courtrooms are not what they look like on TV, or at least this one isn’t. It’s mostly off-white, with dark paneling at the judge’s bench and witness stand, and the Seal of the State of Arizona hanging behind him. Despite the fact that the ceiling isn’t two stories tall or that the floor is dark, polished wood does not make the space any less intimidating. My heart squeezes behind my ribs like a hand around a tennis ball.

Judge Roberts has asked me a question and is now waiting for me. So is everyone else.

I better make this good. This ain’t—

This isn’t a speech tournament. Lose there, and you don’t get a plaque. Lose here, and I’ll spend freshman year in the Maricopa County jail.

I clear my throat, wipe my hands on the thighs of my best navy blue dress pants, and stand.

“Yes I do, Your Honor.”

With that, I stride to the podium on my side of the room. I can see my lawyer, Mr. Goldsen, is both nervous and confident. He’s honestly not a lot older than me, by the look of him. My parents have known his parents for a long time. They play golf and tennis together at the club.

Judge Roberts sits back in his chair and appears to rock back and forth, holding a pen between his index fingers. He’s just asked if I have anything to say for myself, as Mr. Goldsen had said he probably would.

I have no note cards, nothing written down. This is extemporaneous speaking at it’s . . . what? Best? Finest? Most important?

Here we go:

“First of all, thank you for the opportunity to speak, Your Honor. I appreciate the consideration being shown me.”

He arches an eyebrow.

“Secondly . . . to be clear, I do accept responsibility for what I’ve done. It was a bad choice, and I do want to extend my apologies to Joe—uh, Mr. Bishop—for the harm I caused. I also want to apologize to my family and friends for putting them through this ordeal.”

The judge either nods, or rocks in his chair.

“I won’t try to excuse what I did, Your Honor, but I do wish to say that when it comes to my family and my friends, I am very protective. I’ve known Ashley Dixon most of my life. She’s like a sister to me. So when it was clear that someone had—by the definition of the law, Your Honor—had sexually assaulted her, I lost my cool and I reacted inappropriately. And while I certainly won’t let that happen again, I need to tell Ashley’s parents right here and now that I will always be there for her, and I will always do my best to protect her. If that protection has consequences, then I accept them.

“But again, Your Honor, if I ever face another situation like this, and I sincerely hope that I will not, then I will behave in a manner commensurate with the situation.”

Judge Roberts drops his pen on the desk and yanks his eyeglasses off. “Did you just say ‘commensurate’?”

“Um . . . yes, Your Honor.”

“And you’re how old again?”

“Almost fifteen, sir.”

He snaps his glasses back into place. “Go on.”

“That’s all I have, sir. Thank you.”

“I have to say, Mr. Lincoln, you are without a doubt the most eloquent and well-spoken fourteen-year-old I’ve ever met in this courthouse. In fact you may be the most eloquent and well-spoken person I’ve ever met in this courthouse.”

There’s a mild chuckle behind me from all the people here. They shut up when the judge shoots them a look.

“I don’t suppose you plan on becoming a lawyer.”

“As a matter of fact, yes, I do, Your Honor.”

He picks up some papers and snaps them with his hand to get them to stand straight on their own. “Straight As in junior high. You just started high school at . . . Camelback?”

“In August, yes sir.”

“Mmm-hmm. What are you taking?”

I struggle to remember my schedule. “Um . . . integrated math, honors English, speech one, business keyboarding, French, and earth science.”

“Speech? Are you competing? National Forensics?”

“Yes, sir, two weeks ago there was an AIA practice tournament.”

“How did you do, Mr. Lincoln?”

It is very hard not to smile. “First place in extemp debate, sir.”

“Well done, Mr. Lincoln.”

I force myself to be cool, and nod my thanks. I’ll start bragging if I open my mouth, and that feels like a poor idea right now.

“What about your extra-curriculars?” he asks.

“Speech and drama club, Your Honor. Masque & Gavel.”

“No athletics?”

“No, sir.”

The judge stares at the papers for a long moment before setting them down and pulling his glasses off again. “Mr. Lincoln, for the record, I want you to acknowledge that I have every right to sentence you to a jail term. Do you understand?”

My heart skips. “Yes, sir.”

“I also intend to make sure a young man of your caliber doesn’t step foot in this building again until you’re trying your first case.”

My heart resumes. Maybe—maybe—I pulled this off.

“I understand, Your Honor.”

“It is the order of this court,” he says, “that you serve one hundred hours of community service and attend not less than twenty hours of anger management classes and counselling. I’m also recommending without enforcement that you find a good sport or two to work out whatever aggression you’ve got to work out. Is that understood?”

Someone behind me lets out a breath like they’ve been holding it. I think it’s Mom. Or Dad. Or maybe Mr. Goldsen.

“Yes, Your Honor!”

“And finally, Mr. Lincoln, make no mistake. If you ever appear before me again for a charge of this nature, I will make it my business to ensure you won’t hurt anyone else for a very long time. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Very well. I’ll see you in about ten years, defending or prosecuting your first case. Court adjourned.”

He banges his gavel, and that’s that.

I’m not going to jail.

This time.

Beckett’s Last Mixtape – Chapter Four

Posted on January 8, 2024April 28, 2024

ASHLEY

I’m so scared I want to cry.

Or at least sniffle a bit.

Coach Bradley walks back and forth in front of all of us like he should be chewing a cigar and wearing one of those drill sergeant hats like in Full Metal Jacket, which is my dad’s favorite rental for some reason. There’s twenty-two of us “trying out” for cross country. I counted. We’re all sitting on the browning grass beside the school race track, facing the sun and squinting in unison. I promise I put on deodorant this morning before school, but you’d never know it to smell me. Ugh. We haven’t even started running yet, and already the elastic waistband of my horrible blue gym shorts we are forced to wear is damp. Gross.

“We have three rules on this team,” the coach says, taking these slow steps back and forth “Everyone runs. No one quits.”

He pauses.

And smiles.

“No Skittles for breakfast.”

Some of us, me included, laugh a little, and the tension breaks.

Coach slaps his belly, which looks as solid and smooth as our antique oak dining room table under his white Camelback High School T-shirt. “You’ll be putting in thirty to fifty miles a week. When you’re running fifty miles a week, you can eat pretty much whatever you want. Just eat a lot of it. You’ll need it.”

He blows his whistle—chweet!—and shouts, “Feet!”

We all get up. Someone groans.

“Four laps. Take your time. Just warm up. It’s really dang hot out here, so stay hydrated.”

Chweet!

“Go!”

We all take off for the track around the field.

“Did he say fifty miles a week?” I ask this tall boy beside me.

He only grins and shoots off down the lane. Must be Varsity.

Dad insisted I take a sport, he didn’t care what it was. I think secretly he was hoping for tennis, since he and Mom play almost every weekend during the season. But the tennis season in Phoenix is winter. Outdoor tennis is not a great idea in July.

I put Dad off for almost a month, but he finally wore me down. When I heard that it’s basically impossible to get cut from cross country, and that some people on JV even walk during the races, at least a little bit, I thought, “That’s the sport for me!” and signed right up.

So far, the rumors have been true. Coach B is a nice guy, and doesn’t seem to put a lot of pressure on the JV team unless you clearly want to make Varsity. Then he digs in and coaches. I don’t need to be on the receiving end of that, thanks.

But I do run. I take it slow, since that’s what Coach B said: to take our time. After the first lap, a couple people are walking, which puts me in the middle of the group. I guess it’s a decent jog, because I catch up to another boy who is almost wheezing. Sweat runs from his short brown hair and stains his white T-shirt.

“You okay?” I ask, which is all I can manage.

He nods and stumbles into a walk. “Didn’t. Train. Summer.”

His cheeks are splotchy. He puts his hands on his hips, huffing and puffing.

I hear the dreaded whistle followed by Coach B’s voice. “Anderson! Okay to walk, no hands on your hips!”

Followed by another chweet!

The boy beside me drops his hands to let them dangle and keeps walking.

I figure helping him is a good excuse to slow down, so I downshift to a walk, too. “Sure you can breathe?”

He nods but doesn’t answer. He brings his hands to his hips again as if on instinct, then quickly drops them, shooting a look coach’s direction.

We walk side by side for about hundred yards or so before he has his breath back enough to speak. “Should have run over the summer. That was dumb. Just played video games.”

“Yeah, not a big workout playing Super Mario.”

“It is if you’re doing it right.” He glances at me with a little half-grin. “I’m Tommy.”

“Ashley. Nice to meet you. Freshman?”

“Afraid so. You?”

“Yeppers.”

“Sucks, huh.”

I shrug. “The first week was bad. But I had friends from junior high, you know? Where’d you come from? You didn’t go to Mohave.”

“No. Private school. I’m one of those kids.”

“Ooo. Fancy.”

“Not that fancy, trust me.”

“Anybody come with you? Here, I mean?”

“Nope. All my friends are up north at a private high school.”

“Well, if you need someplace to hang out at lunch Monday, we’ll be in the cafeteria.” Might as well ask. Right now it’s just me and Beckett, most of the time, if she doesn’t walk home. Antho’s almost always in the speech and drama department these days.

Tommy looks—well, not surprised, but kind of confused maybe. But then he says, “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

“I mean, you don’t have to. I’m just saying.”

“No, no, it’s cool. Thanks.”

We keep walking for about another minute before I say, “Okay, I gotta run. Hey, haha! Get it? Gotta run? Anyway. Want to get into Varsity someday, right?”

Not at all true, but I don’t want to make it sound like I’m a slacker.

“Cool,” Tommy says. “Good luck. I’m going out for Varsity Walking Squad, so.”

That makes me laugh, and I pick up my pace.

Something about Tommy sticks with me, though, as my feet slap the track. It takes a couple minutes to hone in on what it was.

Most guys scan my body. A lot of them stare at my chest. Which is gross.

Not Tommy. He looked in my eyes.

Beckett’s Last Mixtape – Chapter Two

Posted on December 12, 2023December 12, 2023

RYAN

I saw this girl today and holy shit dude! No kidding.

Like it’s been a few weeks since school started so I don’t know why I never noticed her before, I guess because of our schedules or something but anyway she is nice!

So of course I didn’t talk to her, I mean how could I?

Like I dated this girl Laura last year in junior high for a few weeks but it was honestly kind of lame and neither of us really knew what to do with each other so we mostly listened to her sister’s Def Leppard and Twisted Sister tapes and talked about The Cosby Show and that we both thought Denise Huxtable was fucking hot.

She did take her shirt off once which was cool. Laura, not Denise Huxtable. We were at her house after school but then her mom came home and we were like Oh crap! and that’s as far as we got.

But this girl I saw today in the breezeway she made Laura look like a . . . shit, I dunno, but whatever she’s beautiful.

Our school doesn’t have indoor hallways, which is weird. I guess because it can’t ever snow. It’s only ever hot or not too hot, that’s basically it. I kind of like it, you don’t get that stuffy smell like you do in indoor hallways.

I was walking toward the arts department after AP Bio because the last few days the route I usually took was all jocks walking to the gym and they always bumped into me and shit on purpose so I was on the hunt for a new way to get to my Drama Level 1 class and this girl was walking the opposite way with this other chick who was also kinda cute and stuff but not as cute as this girl in the blue skirt and white shirt. She has short sort of sandy colored hair and was wearing these round sunglasses that reminded me of John Lennon.

The two of them were talking and talking and talking and when we passed. I spun on one toe of my white Nikes and started following thinking maybe I’d say something to her.

But then like I couldn’t. The harder I tried to say something the harder it got to say anything. I was so close I could overhear them talking about their grades. The really cute one was like failing everything or something, even her music class and I thought how the hell do you fail music?

Then they turned right down the sidewalk and went into the first classroom there and I just kept walking past because I mean, what the hell else was I supposed to do?

So what I’m gonna do is Monday I’m gonna make sure I’m in that same place the same time right after AP Bio and I’m gonna say hi.

Or something.

Hello, my friend! I hope you’re enjoying the story. Take a look at other stories and more at my linktree here:

linktr.ee/tomleveen

See you soon!
~ Tom

What is your “Location?”

Posted on June 19, 2023June 19, 2023

Another school assignment I thought some of you may enjoy. So…enjoy!

The assignment was to write two pages answering these questions:
Where are you from?
What are your stories to tell?
Who are you writing for/to?

LOCATION
I am from Scottsdale, Arizona, a small city that abuts the capital city of Phoenix, Arizona along its western border, and connects to other smaller cities like Mesa and Tempe. You can tell who’s native here because we pronounce the latter temPEE, not TEMpee or, worse, temPAY like commentators are apt to do on television for our pro sporting events.

The term “small city” is relative. Phoenix proper recently attained 5 million residents, and at last check was the fifth largest city in the U.S. by population. The state clocks in at 7.2 million.

Until moving to Canada last year, I had lived in three houses total. No apartments, no dorms, and not including a few weeks here and there at my mother-in-law’s house in between buying or selling homes.

Forty-eight years old. Three houses. This sort of stat is true for very, very few people, I think.

I’m not ashamed of it. On the other hand, my 11-year-old has already lived in three homes, and one of those is in another country. I don’t mind that I didn’t move a lot, but I do sometimes wonder what positive and negative impacts it had on me. Certainly I accumulated a lot of stuff, and most of it is useless. I have toys from early childhood still. (Which, happily, are put to use by my children.) I think living in the same town my entire life instilled a sense of place in my heart, but also gave me a certain fear of change—even when change would be for the best.

Part of my reason for moving out of my country was specifically to get out of and hopefully alter (or at least interrogate) my Location. Just before leaving, I livestreamed a tour of my hometown, talking about memories and nostalgia; about lessons learned. What I realized at the end of the stream was that I could no longer be in the same city as the house I grew up in and still make forward progress in my own emotional well-being.

I owned a VHS video camera from sophomore year of high school through to after the turn of the millennium. Thus, not only do I have vivid memories of where I grew up because I lived in one place for so long, I also have literal, visual proof of what it looked like, what I looked like, what my family looked like; how we interreacted; and the ways in which that place affected me and continues to affect me today.

I lived on Windsor Avenue, just a block or so from the border of Phoenix. I had a large backyard and a large house. My mother and father both divorced their first spouses, and then had me, though I’ve learned recently the pregnancy was likely an accident. I have six older brothers and sisters who, when I was born, were being forced to live Brady-Bunch style in this house. The next-youngest is at least ten years older than me, so I have few memories of them. They were out of the house while I was very young.

Only later in life did I realize my family was wealthy while I grew up, at least by modern American standards, though we possessed few of the trappings of wealth. My parents drove the same cars for twenty years. They didn’t go out shopping or take expensive vacations (in fact, they rarely travelled). When I was young, we belonged to a country club, but while I did learn to play tennis and sometimes used the pool, fundamentally I did not fit in with the other kids there. Eventually we left the club, though I’m not sure why and will probably never know, because one Location my family shares is that of secrecy.

No—that’s the wrong word. It’s not secrecy so much as brushing all negativity under the rug and pretending (insisting!) that Everything Is Fine.

Especially when it is not.

But I grew up with enormous pine tress that I’d climb to the top of. This large back yard became the scene of fights with monsters, fights with pirates, wars with foreign invaders. (My early moral compass originated from 1980s action films, for better or worse). I climbed and swung and hid and spied. At 13, I missed the state record for pullups (18!) by one, only because I’d spent my whole life pulling myself up in my favorite tree in the yard.

I went to an ELCA Lutheran preschool, then to a Missouri Synod Lutheran school for K-8. The impact of those years cannot be overstated. The education was good, but the physical punishments were not. It was a small school with a graduating 8th grade class of perhaps 30. I had many enemies, but I also learned from one friend in particular the truest, deepest meaning of friendship that I carry to this day. This school, in hindsight, got many things wrong about childrearing and my education (this was 1979 to 1988), but they also got a few things exactly right: for instance, being given the chance to use a teacher’s VHS editing deck to make my first movie, or being the only student taken to Arizona State University’s “Young Authors Conference,” where I presented my 30,000-word fantasy, Derro The Warrior. I still have both the book and the movie. They were far too formative to let go.

After grade school, I attended a public high school (culture shock!), where I became a part of a group of chosen family. These are people who made deliberate choices to love me at my best and worst, and I them. This Location matters more to me than any physical locale. Later my Location became the intentional part of another family, which informs many of my choices today, particularly as it pertains to how I raise my own children.

My Location is the heat and sun and lack of rain. My Location is the little hills we call “mountains” because we (Phoenicians) have never seen the Rockies or Appalachians.

My Location is a time in U.S. American history before school shootings, Internet, cell phones, or Covid. It is decidedly European in descent (English, Swedish, and German), with the attendant ignorance of privilege that comes with such ancestry; my current Location is trying to understand, question, and repair that ignorance.

My Location is the first hand knowledge of violence enacted upon my body by my own hand and by others, and the lifelong repercussions of that violence.

My Location is alone, and I am grateful for that, because it is what fostered my imagination and led me to become a storyteller. And as a storyteller, I take my responsibilities to my readers very seriously, particularly if they are young. Particularly when I see myself in them. Too many of them.

I am happily from the 1980s and 1990s. I am from couch forts on Saturday morning, sugar cereal, and Godzilla movies on “World Beyond” (KPHO TV 5 Phoenix!) long before they were eviscerated on MST3K. I am from bike rides to Thomas Mall to go to B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and buy the newest Judy Blume. Or Stephen King. The aroma of ink and paper suffuses my being. I am from winning a bike at Your Movie House on the corner because I rented so goddamn many horror movies when I was far too young to be watching them.

The stories that are mine to tell are the stories of young people who were or are not seen. My stories are often about dismissal, which is different (and I argue, worse) than rejection. I am here to tell stories of fear, pain, loss, grief—and triumph in despite of them.

I write for the weirdos and drama department kids. I write for the punks and the outcasts. I write for the kids who were legally beaten in school systems and who knew instinctively that family in its truest sense was a selected relationship. I write for the abused, abandoned, and neglected. My goal is to give them escape and entertainment and confirmation of their trials; I want my work to tell them, Yes, I see you. You are safe here.

Because my earliest Location was the opposite of that. My later Location embodied it. I want to pass it on to anyone who needs it.

Never Abandon the Blissful Value of Saying What Can’t Be Said

Posted on August 15, 2022August 15, 2022

MIXTAPE

by Tom Leveen

A mixtape says the things you can’t. Or won’t.

Or sometimes: shouldn’t.

Mikey fretted over this daily as he sorted through song after song, classics and new hits, trying to compose his feelings with someone else’s music.

Some of it depended on his mood. Some days it was all AC/DC, which he knew Glorietta liked from back in the day. But this wasn’t the sort of situation where one could blithely record Highway to Hell onto the mix, even if it was one of her favorites. The title was just too . . . inappropriate.

He leavened today’s tape with some old R.E.M., thinking some of the lyrics of Driver 8 said a lot of what he wished to say: take a break, we’ve been on this trip too long.

He’d never say that to her. Even if he could muster up the courage and, hell, write the words down, they still wouldn’t come out right. He had way too much experience with that. Glorietta deserved his best.

Nirvana next? No, too abrasive. Poison? No, a power ballad didn’t work either, not today.

Checking the time—he did not want to be late, so as to maximize their time together—Mikey hurriedly chose some Midnight Oil, followed by U2. Classic stuff. Despite not the world’s biggest U2 fan, in his opinion, The Joshua Tree was one of the top great albums ever made.

Minutes ticked away as he painstakingly constructed the opus. He didn’t have a title for it yet; previous incarnations included A Fragile Flash of Lightning, riffing off Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder. Glorietta—she preferred “Glory”—had given him a brief laugh for that, which Mikey cherished. Last week he’d gone full metal-head, nothing but Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Skid Row, Queensrÿche, Flotsam and Jetsam . . . and called it Wish You Were Hair, bemoaning that he’d lost his own long locks some time ago and still feeling pretty pouty and petty about it.

Petty! Of course.

Wildflowers became the last song on side B. Glory belonged among the wildflowers, most definitely.

Mikey hesitated as he scrawled the song title on the lined white insert. Did Wildflowers imply too much? That he, Mikey, should be her lover?

No, he decided. Most of the lyrics seemed very pointed at wishing the best for the other person. If that happened to come from a place of pure love and affection and . . . okay, fine, lust . . . Glory wouldn’t be any the wiser.

He hoped. God, the last thing she needed right now his sappy confession of love. No way, man.

Mikey snapped the cassette into its case and ran for his bike. If he pedaled hard, he’d get there just in time.

He got to the hospital one minute after Glory’s visiting hours began. A little breathless, he peeked into her room to see if she was awake.

She was. Barely. The TV was on. Family Ties.

“Hey,” Mikey whispered, still peering around the open door, not wanting to come in without Glory’s permission.

“Hey, you,” Glorietta said, and motioned with her fingers.

It was all the strength she had, and it was all the invitation Mikey needed. He slid into the room and went to the side of the wide bed, where he slipped the case into her hand.

“I, uh, I made . . . I made this . . . um . . . it’s, it’s a new—”

Even in her emaciated state, Glory’s smile lit his insides on fire.

“You know, Michael, one of these days . . .” She had to pause to take a breath. “You’re gonna have to bring a Walkman. Remember those?” Another pause. “Or you could just send me a Spotify list.”

He shook his head. “Not the same.”

“No,” Glory said. “It’s really not. You’re right.”

She lifted the tape to her face, squinting. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Christ, Michael, you’re fifty-five years old, you better get on it.”

Glory smiled again as Mikey shuffled his feet. He wanted to say, “I did. I did find what I was looking for. Forty-five years ago when you moved in next door.”

But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t.

And, probably, oughtn’t.

All these years, nothing but friends. Through her various boyfriends, her first husband, her divorce, her second husband, him leaving her. Never having kids, career like a pinball in one of the old machines they used to play back in the neighborhood growing up. Then finally, this illness. He’d been the best friend he could. So he came every day with a new tape, and he’d keep coming until the inevitable end.

It was nearer than he cared to think about.

Glory gently put the cassette on a nearby table with several others Mikey’d brought over the past couple weeks. He almost helped her do it, her gesture was so weak. But he knew her stubbornness well. She would have given him a raft of shit for helping.

After the tape clattered mildly against the table top, Glory then stretched out her hand toward him.

“Michael.”

Perplexed, he took her hand. She was so cold.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yeah, but, I . . . I mean, I do, I want to, I like to . . . unless you want me to stop.”

Glory shook her head weakly against the pillow. “No. Don’t do that. I’m just saying.” A pause. “You have a life. You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

Mikey licked his lips, eyes darting. The words were right there, he could taste them in his mouth.

They wouldn’t come.

In a burst, Mikey snatched the new mixtape off the table and popped open the tiny radio-cassette player he’d brought on his first visit. He jammed the tape inside, slapped the tray shut, and pressed the play button.

Freddie Mercury said what he couldn’t. Mikey glanced at Glory, to see if she understood.

Glorietta pressed her lips together.

“Yeah,” she said quietly as the song played. “You’re mine, too.”

Mikey smiled, pulled a plastic molded chair to her bed, and sat down. Glory offered her hand again, and he took it.

She fell asleep an hour later in the middle of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Mikey stayed by her side until visiting hours were over.

He’d come back tomorrow. Maybe with some Beastie Boys.

THE END

What It Means To Make a Mixtape: How Adults Should Deal with Teen Drama

Posted on November 16, 2021November 16, 2021

If you were to make a new mix tape today, what would be on it? What songs speak to you right now? Would you go back to the olden days and grab some of the songs from your mis-spent youth, or would you find something a little bit more modern? John Cusack had a bit about this in the movie High Fidelity, based on the book of the same name written by Nick Hornby. You have to time things out right, you want to lead the listener from one song to another to really make sure that they’re grasping your intent.

Giving a mixtape lets a person know you see them, you hear them, and you’re thinking thoughtfully about them. It demonstrates gifting them with your most precious commodity: Time.

I’m curious: what do today’s teenagers do? If you have teenagers, because I don’t quite yet, send me a message. Let me know how teens are sending one another messages that are not direct messages — and by “direct messages” I mean sending oblique messages, sending coded messages, because if I give you a mixtape, that’s a coded message. I’m coming at you from the side. For simplicity’s sake, when a boy wants to tell a girl he likes her, what does he do these days? What are the steps he takes? Because I don’t know if it’s the same as what we used to do or not, but I will tell this:

The feelings are the same.

This makes me so angry with adults who work with teens (or even those who don’t work with teens). What makes me so angry is adults who have completely and utterly forgotten what it was like to be 16, to be 18, or to be 13. It frustrates the shit out of me now, as an adult.

I understand frustration with kids. Yes, when your kid comes home and they’re all bent out of shape because somebody said something unkind to them, or they got a B instead of an A (or they got an F instead of a D, or whatever your standard is right now) and they’re all upset about that, and you’re over here thinking, “This is so not a big deal.” Maybe they got second place in the speech tournament (total gyp!!!) or the team didn’t make the playoffs, and you . . . a tax-paying, mortgage-holding adult or whatever you happen to be . . . is going, “FFS, this is not a big deal, please contain yourself, Young Person…”

Yeah.

I get it.

I absolutely feel the same way whenever one of my kids flips out (and they’re not even teenagers yet) and I’m over here going, “Oh, dude, this is so not the biggest worry you’re going to have in your life.”

But we have to do better, grownups.

We have to remember. We have to go back to those times when we felt that same way, because most of us did. (There were a handful of us who were born at age 30, like, “All right, how do I finish school? I got to finish school and go on with my life, how soon can I do that?” There were a couple of them at my high school who, from day one, were so beyond high school. They were so past dealing with high school trauma and bullshit, high school was just a speedbump for them.)

Most of us actually did go through adolescence. And we went through it hard, in the most dramatic possible fashion. Some of it was legit. I had friends who had no food, friends who were getting hit, friends who had real-fucking-life shit to deal with. And some of it was just . . . drama.

It doesn’t matter which it is when we deal with it as adults. Our response is the same.

We need to remember that, one: this is absolutely real to them. And two . . . they haven’t experienced everything we’ve experienced yet.

Sometimes we place our adult metrics or screens of life experience against theirs and they don’t match up. They can’t. They’re flipping out over this “little tiny thing,” like they got third place in this competition instead of second or first.

We know it’s not a big deal. Trust me, in the grand scheme of things, nobody gives a righteous royal fuck that I was “Best Masque & Gavel Member 1992.” Nobody cares! It doesn’t matter when you’re 47. But at the time? My God! If I hadn’t won that award, it would’ve been so traumatic and so scarring!

. . . And I would’ve gotten over it, because there’s a ton of shit I’ve gotten over, just like you have. But we need to remember this is the first time teens are going through this. The first time they lose the big game, the first time they lose the competition, the first time they get the awful grade, the first time the girl or the boy says “No thank you, I’m not interested.”

We need to remember that and we need to treat them accordingly, speaking to them with love and kindness.

I admit, as an adult, as an instructor, as a parent . . . I sometimes forget, because I have my own problems and I get stressed, and I get snappy, and I say things that I later have to go back and apologize for. But most of the time, my wife and I try very hard to remember that, for whatever it is they are upset about, it’s for real.

My son is 10 and in fourth grade. Recently he and some of his friends got in trouble on the playground for playing Red Light Green Light, and apparently it was a very physical game (because they are 10 year old boys!). The playground monitor said, “No! Stop! You’re not allowed to do that anymore because you’re playing Squid Game!”

To which my wife and I were like, “What is the hell is that?” We had to go look it up, after which, okay yeah, I could see why maybe they would be concerned about it. But it’s not as if that’s what they were really playing! As if this were a life-and-death saga playing out on the playground.

My son came home really upset for having gotten “yelled at” at school. Turns out he wasn’t really yelled at, but the playground monitor didn’t do a good job of expressing her concern, so yes, she was also in the wrong. But he happens to be a very sensitive kid and he was physically, legitimately upset.

What we did not say is, “Son, life’s going to get so much worse, calm down.” You cannot say that to a 10-year-old in the moment. You say, “Oh my God, dude, that really sucks. What happened? Tell me about it. Wow, man, I am so sorry that happened. I’m so sorry you’re upset. Yeah, that really sucks.”

You can come back to it later and have the discussion about how it’s not a big deal, and about how to deal with such a scenario in the future, but you don’t open with that. You don’t lead with that.

This is particularly important the first time your kid comes home with a broken heart.

Man, I am not looking forward to that, because it’s coming. I know it’s coming. You went through it, I went through it, some of us went through it multiple times . . . but the first time, or the first time it’s the big one . . . in my experience, everybody has that one breakup that just fucking crushes you.

The first time they come home with that broken heart, it’s just all the angst and drama that you can possibly imagine, it’s just this Dawson’s Creek and My So-Called Life all over the place, it’s going to be so tempting to say, “Get over it,” or “She isn’t worth it,” or, “You’re too good for him.” Let’s all remember that our first job is to hug them (and maybe get ice cream) and say, “I’m so sorry. I know. I know, and I’m here.”

In other words . . . you sort of make them a mix tape. I see you, I hear you, I’m thinking of you.

Acknowledge that the pain is real. Acknowledge that it is true in this moment and the hurt is fucking real. Remember what it was like that first time, and give your kid or your students that same benefit of understanding.

Don’t worry, the day will come when you can talk about it and have a calm and reasonable discussion about the relationship or about what went wrong or what they can do differently next time, etc. etc. But right then in that moment, man . . . just let them be young people. Remember they are still children, and let them be children. Your brain isn’t even done developing until around age 25; let’s show a little grace.

Don’t dismiss them. Please, I beg you, do not dismiss them.

And maybe, I don’t know . . . make them a mixtape.