Something unremarkable happened today.

My son, who is 16, got off the bus and told me he had a date tomorrow with a girl from school. They're going to see Pirates of the Carbbean tomorrow and he's trying to figure out how to get there.

Transportation aside, I was glad to hear it because his girlfriend of five weeks, his first girlfriend ever, broke up with him about a month ago. He said he got hit with the big three all in the same conversation. 1) "My feelings changed." 2) "It's not you it's me." and 3)"We can still be friends." I told him 1) She's an idiot, 2) She's right, and 3) Why do you want to be friends with an idiot? Despite my advice, he seemed to handle ir better than I would have.

So I was glad of the news. He said she was a cheerleader :woohoo: who's in his chemistry class. He said she started flirting with him on Monday by passing him a note saying she liked him. (I'm glad texting has not destroyed the classic crafts of high school flirting.) Today he passed her a note saying "if you send me notes saying you like me, aren't you supposed to give me your number?" She passed him back a note saying, "are you asking for my number?" And so on.

By the end of the class they made the date.

He doesn't have his license yet but she does. She told him she's not sure her mother trusts her to drive alone, license or no license. This is rural Pennsylvania and he needs a car to have his date. I said she could use my Jeep. He reminded me of the coffee cups, cigarette butts and unspecified trash on the floor and said "no thanks". I am now Plan B if she can't get a car. I'l drive them in my wife's van, which is significantly cleaner.

He showed me her facebook page and pointed out with chagrin one of her friends who rides his bus. He told her on the way home and she said "What does she see in you?" I told him she's probably jealous. His date seems like a typical young woman that, for the moment, holds my awkward, vulnerable, adolescent son's heart in her hands. He told me what he knew about her. While we were looking at her facebook page he commented on her cheerleading outfit but not once on the fact that her background was AfricanAmerican. Just that she was a cheerleader and he had to figure out a way to get to the movies. Which is as it should be.

After he told me his news, I thought back to when I was in high school and all the crap that was going on then. All the loud arguments about if we should date a black girl or a Puerto Rican girl sound now like muffled shouts from the bottom of a well. I thought back earlier to grammar school, when some parents, mothers most often, odd as it seems, told us not to go around the corner to play with the Italian kids because we were Irish. It's like shadows now.

Enjoy your date, Luke. Get lucky if you can.

I'm glad you find unremarkable something that so many of my friends and I found remarkable.

it amazing how heartbreaking it is to go through your child's first heartbreak?

Hope they have a great time together!

This is probably the best feel-good news I read all day today!

I'm sure your son would be fine :) and I hear the pirates of the Caribbean is supposed to be a great movie....I was gonna watch it tomorrow myself, but my friends, with whom I was going to watch it convinced me to watch Kung Fu panda 2 instead :P

various and sundry statutes, depending on the state?

"...Get lucky if you can..."

really be a nuisance to get any info from mine. Sounds like Luke is a sweet kid..

This generation is much more color blind than previous ones. My kids are much the same way. That's a good thing, as Martha would say.

dang both of them! snif

unless you've had enough forethought to "get prepared."

I thought this story was lovely until I hit that line -- we don't need yet another pregnant high school cheerleader added to the statistics.

when the OP said that the little-known cheerleader could use Rug's Jeep. It's an incredible liability to even let your own kid drive your car.

I really doubt it.

Or never knew any?

I'm not saying nerdish, clumsy teen aged girls don't have their worth (After all, I was such a girl) but certainly being popular, co-ordinated and perky isn't necessarily all bad either.

like he saw the underaged cheerleader as a sex object and was living vicariously through his son's opportunity to screw ("get lucky" with) a cheerleader.

It would be awesome if the value of women was placed on something other than sexual objectification and porn stereotypes, you know - like kindness, intelligence and humor, but perhaps that's too much to ask.

I wonder if he has daughters, and if so what he teaches them about their self-worth.
And I wonder what values he passes on to his son about women.

that we had years ago. I always said that the only way we will get rid of racism is to mix up the races so much that no one is pure anything. But I was wrong, changes are happening in these younger generations and that is great.

As to how to get to the movie. Helllllooooo Luke, you are capable of cleaning the Jeep out! If we are going down memory lane here, I remember when the guys always washed the car before a date.

That annoyed me.

her affection.

I hope it means something different than what it seems to.

I wonder what the girls parents would think of that sentiment, if they saw it. I wonder if they too would applaud the young man for not even noticing the young ladies race as he plowed forward in his attempt to fuck her. I wonder if they would applaud his parent's encouragement. I wonder if the OP's child is even REMOTELY prepared to cope with a baby. I wonder if my own little girl is prepared to deal with the baby she is now carrying. I wonder if that man gave a damn about my daughter's race as he plotted his way into her pants. I wonder if that baby's Daddy could possibly be as irresponsible as he seems to be.

I wonder.

Calm down, people.

Nice OP. K&R

Get unlucky?

I enjoyed the piece too.

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I was quite taken aback by all the little pick-apart psychoanalytic comments in this thread.

You are sharing your joy your kid got a date with a hot chick and is getting over his heartbreak, and people are trying to figure out what's WRONG with that. SHEESH.

It's actually pretty funny, if you step back about three yards from the screen and see the printed words. I for one am delighted and hope he got lucky and she got lucky and they had a swell time, and that doesn't need to mean whether or not they had sex either.

Life is four-dimensional when you're a teenager on a hot date. You don't have to let two-dimensional beings rain on your campfire there. (I put it that way 'cuz I can't remember the words I wanted to say .... it is rather late in the evening over here.)

What a perfect way of expressing this. Elegant.