Does He Have a Son or What? I Can't Remember.

My son has noticed a decidedly biased quality to the posts on this site - namely that they are all about his sister and not at all about him. I actually figured his teenage sensibilities would cry foul against having his business displayed in such a public way, but apparently he's been dying to see himself in print. So, I have committed the next three entries to him, in an attempt to even things out a little.

Today's post is about the unspoken casualty of the teenage years - the memory. I first started noticing it in my son when he hit thirteen. It was as if on that unluckiest of all birthdays, a time bomb went off in his brain and took out all his memory storage. Or, to use another metaphor, it was like someone clicked on a suspicious link in the Internet of his brain and downloaded a virus that wiped his hard drive. I'm talking about forgetfulness on the level of Ten-second Tom. It started with the normal lapses of memory - forgotten homework, lunches left at home, pants with no belts. Soon enough, it progressed to forgetting conversations that we'd had just moments before and forgetting school projects until the night before (or in some cases the night after) they're due. As of the night of this post, it has become impossible for the boy to remember to put another bag in the garbage can after he takes out the trash. I have seen him, after being asked to get his shoes out of the car and get his book bag out of the hallway, come back in with the shoes, step over the book bag with some difficulty, and go right back to playing games on the couch.

I'm told that this is just a part of the devastation of adolescence. That all teenagers, and especially boys, go through this absent-minded stage. However, I don't really need to do much research to track the cause. I remember (now that I've passed through those black waters) how my parents, teachers, and coaches suffered through my own debilitating adolescent forgetfulness. At night, sometimes, I am still haunted by the weight of textbooks held out at ninety degrees to remind me to bring my books to class, the hand cramps brought on by hundreds of lines written promising to do my homework, the leagues run around the football field in bare shoulder pads as a result of forgetting my practice jersey. As the irony gods would have it, I may owe most of my physical fitness to my mental infirmity.

So how mad can I really be at him? One the one hand, it's part of the age, a phase we men must all endure. On the other hand, he does get it honestly. How can I yell at him when the shouts of yesteryear still ring in my own ears? For all I know it may be genetic. The question is, when can I expect this phase to end? Also, where did I put my keys?