The car in front of me is nothing but jerks. They didn’t use a turn signal when changing lanes. Now I have to change lanes because they are jerks in front of me. I don’t use a turn signal. I pass by another car, and I notice that a lady has her phone in front of her while she drives.
“I don’t text and drive, Dad.” I can feel her eye roll. That’s why she is a jerk.
On the radio, I’m listening to a book that has a lot of jerks in it. I switch to a radio station, and now I’m listening to disc jockey jerks. I’m living in a jerk world.
“You’re mad,” my daughter says. “Chill, bro.”
I have ceased being dad. Now I’m bro. Tomorrow I’ll be old man. Eventually, I’ll devolve into Grandpa and my knees will be able to tell the weather.
“Shut it,” I say to my daughter.
“You’re trying to pick a fight! Pick a fight with other drivers. With some dude on the radio. With me. Oh, my God, you are so predictable. He’s coming back, you know. He’s only gone for a week.”
My jerk daughter calls me out on my behavior, as she should. I have not spent my life raising a passive creature. She’s a warrior. She will help me fight the jerks of the world. After she abandons me and leaves me for her jerk college.
Today, though, I just dropped off my son for a week-long vacation without me. He’s with my mom on a road trip. It’s a recreation of the road trip she took me on when I was his age. They are going to the Grand Canyon. She takes all of her grandchildren on an adventure when they are teens. My own grandparents did that for me. And I miss my son already. Jerk.
I don’t deal with emotions in myself very well. I know this. And instead of maybe calming myself or realizing that none of this is a big deal, I try to pick fights.
“Do you remember when our daughter went to school for the first time?” my wife once asked me.
“Of course,” I said.
“You picked a fight with the bus driver.”
“They were late!”
“And you did the same thing two years later,” she reminded me.
“They didn’t want to drive a hundred feet to our house. They made him walk to them.”
“And when our youngest went to school?”
“I didn’t pick a fight with the bus driver,” I protested.
“But…”
“I yelled at the admissions people.”
I know what’s happening right now. It’s the first day of school all over. Yes, I want to pick a fight because picking a fight means that I can win. Against who? No idea. Quit asking jerk questions.
Last week I took my daughter for her first official college visit. We were both excited. As we toured the school with the rest of the students and parents, I broke off a few times to see something interesting while the jerk tour guides talked about other stuff.
The trees were very nice. Oaks and maples. Very mature, unlike my daughter who will no way be ready to leave my house in a year. We visited the quad because every campus has a stupid quad. I remembered my own college where I spent hours in such a place with my friends. I got really close with one of my guy friends there. I married his sister. I’m a jerk.
We talked to the admissions counselor. I did some math in my head. My daughter loved the campus and this one is officially on her shortlist.
Back in our car, at this moment, my daughter says, “Don’t be such a baby.” She emotionally pokes the emotional bear.
“I’m not,” I tell her.
“You just flipped off that McDonalds.”
“I don’t like their sign.”
Here’s the thing about empty nesting. Yes, I think all of us parents look forward to it. The moment when we are truly free to go about our days. We can go out to dinner when we want to. We can rediscover our spouses in exciting places in the house again. If I wanted to, I could sit quietly and just read a book. No one will ask me what’s for dinner or why we don’t have snacks in the house.
There’s joy in all of that. And the chance to see the kids that we have raised go out and conquer the world. We are apprehensive but optimistic. After all, we did a dang fine job.
But that’s all in the abstract. It’s for one day and tomorrow. The future is fuzzy until one day you wake up and you’re doing college visits and dropping your son off at the airport without you. They are on their own adventures, and you’re not invited.
Time. It always feels like I need more time.
I don’t deal with this well. I’m being unreasonable. I’m being goofy. I should handle this with stoicism as a good dead inside father should. But I like fighting more. It makes me feel that I can win, even if there is no win.
But also, the world is full of jerks.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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