One week into the school year and the kids are already snowed under with homework. Except for Kevin. He enjoyed telling the other two that it took him ten minutes to finish his math and vocabulary homework and had the rest of the weekend free to do whatever he wanted. He was less thrilled with the news that, being the only offspring available, he was going to help me clean litter boxes, scoop dog poop, and vacuum. Yes, I will use my children as cheap manual labor.

After church this morning Alex and Rachel sat at the kitchen table with books open in front of them, and it occurred to me (not for the first time) that I am very glad I am no longer in high school or junior high. Those kids have twice as much homework as I ever did, and Char doesn’t remember having to spend hours every weekend on it, either. They were still plugging away at lunchtime and when I forced sandwiches on them (I fail at lunch; Char actually cooks for them on weekends) Rachel said that Alex spent so much time helping her figure out how to order fractions (good thing she didn’t ask me) and drilling her on the composition of cells (I know there’s a nucleus in there somewhere) that he had forgotten he needed to go to the library to get research materials for his own homework.

If I remember right, in 10th grade I was reading books after which I wrote a basic book report. He’s doing a paper on Shakespeare’s sonnets and the vocabulary and etymology of the times.

I honestly don’t even know what “etymology” is and can only spell it because he wrote it down.

He didn’t need to go right then because he has six weeks to get this paper done; I, however, wanted to get him alone. If we’re going to allow him to date, I didn’t see any reason to wait to tell him, but I also did not want to have this discussion around Rachel and Kevin, just in case I was able to steer him onto the subject of girls in general.

The local library apparently is not open on Sundays; we wound up going to a bookstore instead. I think that worked out better for me, since I was able to wait in the attached Starbucks knockoff, where I paid $4 for a damned soft drink. It was also a good place to talk to the kid and pry into his private life. We live in the boonies, far enough that the kids’ friends can’t just show up to hang out. I’d like to know a little bit about the people they hang around with in school, not just the members of the opposite gender that have them drooling.

I started with cell phones; after much deliberation (he does not need to know that his mother basically said “get them their own damned phones already”) he and Rachel will be allowed to get basic cell phones; they can text but they cannot access the Internet with these phones. If I find out they have, the phones go away. When he was sufficiently pleased with that news, I added that we felt he would need to have a phone on him the first time he took a girl out and she was pleading with him to take her home already.

It took a few moments for that to sink in. Fine, he can date, but with limits. No girls that are as much older as the one he tried to sneak past us in May. I’d prefer for now that he stuck to his own age, perhaps a year younger. I’ll grit my teeth and not say anything if she’s a year older. He gets driven to and from these supposed dated by either his mother or myself. No Grandpa, no Dack or TK, no elder siblings of his intended date. If I call his phone while he’s out he’d damn well better answer it. Grades better stay up.

He has no trouble agreeing to everything I want. Now. I expect a backlash when he actually has a girlfriend.

I’m still looking for a graceful way to get out of him what he may or may not have done with the sixteen year old before we found out about her. There was no actual dating but the school they attend is on a sprawl of land with plenty of places for horny teenagers to do what horny teenagers will, and as much as he will protest that it’s none of my business, at his age I think it is. I trust my son, but I was his age once and I know I would have done anything my girlfriend would have agreed to. Alex is not afraid of girls in the least; I wasn’t afraid of my girlfriend but anyone else? Terrified.

Tomorrow after we pick them up from school we’ll go get them the phones, and figure out something for Kevin since this will undoubtedly feel unfair to him (he’s 10; he does not need a cell phone, period.) Alex is trying to be mature about it, all very “well this is good news” when I know inside he’s squealing as much as Rachel did when he passed it along to her. On the ride home he left me with something else to chew on: we’re allowing him to date at 14. Sixteen and a half months from now, Rachel turns 14.

I’m not sure I can be fair in this.