Having a Marvelous Time
by Laurie Woolever
A few months ago, my teenage son told me what he wanted for his upcoming birthday. “Hear me out,” he said, and I knew it was going to be ridiculous, and it was: he wanted my permission, plus my money, to attend an enormous three-day hip-hop festival in a Miami stadium, an annual event at which there’s an annual non-zero number of deaths in the crowd.
I’ll admit I wanted to be the cool mom, give him what he wanted. This is how they get us. Teenagers can be quietly manipulative, like cats. Or maybe it’s that parents like me can be dopes, if they haven’t sorted out their own self-esteem, or if they (I) still feel guilty about the divorce.
For a few hours, I was taken in by that thing of seeing myself reflected in my child. At his age I too was desperate to attend the big, exciting, druggy show (in my case, the Grateful Dead, playing at a Buffalo, NY stadium whose naming rights currently belong to a robustly profitable health insurance provider). Only instead of asking my parents, who would have definitely said no, I simply lied to them and got into a car with some other teenagers, a bag of chips and a couple of tabs of acid.
Keep us breathing fire!
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