February 28: "Seashore," Best Foot, Driver's Training

Billy Collins watches a bird . . . 

Seashore

by:  Billy Collins

A banded

Piping Plover

puts its best foot forward

then the other.

Piping Plovers are amazing to watch on a beach, running toward the sea, running away from the sea, like kids playing tag on a school playground.  They're feathered puffs of confidence and fear, stepping forward, then retreating.

Like Collins' Piping Plover, I always try to put my best foot forward.  My mantra for most of my life has been "Go big or go home."  If I'm going to succeed, I'm going to succeed spectacularly.  If I'm going to fail, I will do so spectacularly, as well.  Either way, people are going to take notice.

I've had my share of successes, and I've fallen on my face a lot, too.  Of course, that describes most people's lives.  Humans can do amazing things like discover penicillin.  Humans can also fuck things up majorly, as well.  Ask the next polar bear you see swimming from ice floe to ice floe.  Landing on the moon.  Success.  Chernobyl.  Disaster.  You get the idea.

My son started his driver's training class at school a few days ago.  We went to the orientation session for parents and students.  We listened to all of the steps involved in obtaining a Michigan driver's license.  It's not like the good old days when I learned to drive.  For me, I sat in a classroom after school for about a week, took a multiple choice test, drove for a week with an instructor and two other wannabe drivers, and then went to the local Secretary of State office and got my license.  Bada boom bada bing, and I was driving a car.  And all of that was free.

My son's path to driving is much more complicated and much more expensive.  I could tell, watching him at the meeting, that he was really nervous, although he was trying to play it cool.  He didn't know any of the other student drivers, and he was in an unfamiliar school setting.  Plus, he's going to be getting homework.  A lot of it.  Watching him was sort of like watching a banded Piping Plover chasing and fleeing from waves on a seashore.  He was equally confident and terrified.  

I know my son will succeed.  He's smart and funny.  Plus, he knows how much money I paid for him to take this class.  But, he's also very young and unsure of himself.  Basically, a typical teenager, facing a world that's both comfortably familiar and wildly strange.  My job right now is to teach him how to navigate the choppy waters toward adulthood.  

I think most adults forget how difficult being a teenager is.  Sure, young people seem to have more freedom and less responsibility.  Yes, going to school sounds so much easier than punching a time clock and working eight, nine, or ten hours a day.  However, throw into that mix raging hormones and little-to-no impulse control, and you have the recipe for panic attacks and depression.

I love my son.  Like any father, I want him to succeed at everything he does.  However, I know that falling can be just as instructive as running like the wind.  

Win or lose, Saint Marty will always be there for him, whether he's putting his best foot forward or taking three hundred steps back.