Mark's Pages

March 17, 2004:

Familiar voices. Long time passing. Drunk. Wake you at midnight to include you in their party.

"Whenever I think of you I'll always picture..." Embarrassing anecdotes. "You were so..." [fill in the blank: hyperactive | demonstrative | socially unskilled | effusive | inept.] Yes, you're thinking. As your teenage children are now.

Is that why they've searched you out? To find someone whose experience of adolescence seems similar, in their eyes, to the dramatic problems their own children experience today? As if the act of parenting produces a form of self-myopia allowing them to see your mistakes but not their own.

You play, although you're not sure you want to, hoping it helps them somehow.