Chaos Magnet

The hardest part of raising a teenager

Well, my adrenaline is going now. I was all set to go to sleep, but it was too warm in the bedroom so my wife turned on the attic fan. Almost immediately, we smelled smoke. It's pretty cool outside, even for Florida, so it's not unreasonable that some of our neighbors would be burning their fireplaces. Sure, it's 2am, but it's Christmas, after all. Even we'd had a nice cozy evening, and oh yeah, we'd had a fire in the fireplace this evening.

My son had been in charge of it, and apparently hadn't put it out before coming upstairs to while away the evening on the computer. So I dragged myself out of bed to tell him to put it out and when I opened the bedroom door, I was practically overcome with smoke.

I threw on a robe and went running downstairs, along with both my wife and son, to find a roaring fire, but thank heavens it was all in the fireplace.

The smoke, however, was not. Apparently the airflow from the attic fan had reignited embers of the fire and simulated what would have happened if the flue had been closed.

What annoys me, though, is that the embers had been there in the first place. I pointed out to my son that twice in two days he'd had a fire going in the fireplace, and after he'd out it out there had still been embers. (The Christmas Eve embers were still glowing when we got up this morning.)

His response? "You never told me to put the embers out."

I never told him to put the embers out?!? Silly me, I thought that was inherent in "Put the fire out." Now he's trying to tell me that that crackling noise I'm hearing is just because the bricks and the metal grating are hot. Do I have "stupid" written on my forehead?

I should mention that he's seventeen. In other words, he's at the stage where he really believes that he knows everything, and for all practical purposes, he knows virtually nothing.

Oh, I'm not saying that he's stupid, or ignorant, or any of those things. He's not. He's actually a very bright kid. But I remember being seventeen, and there's a very curious thing that a seventeen year old doesn't know.

The world is deeper than it looks.

There are details that lie beneath the surface of most of the events and situations we find ourselves in that we only discover through experience. And we only get experience by trying, and sometimes, by failing.

But that's one place that the seventeen year old has the advantage. He can try and fail and get up and try again and (hopefully) never regret it.

But I, as his father, have the harder job. I have to watch.

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