Freedom

When I was 7, I watched Phoebe Cates bare her perfect breasts in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Freedom.

When I was 10, I gorged myself on Honey Nut Cheerios while watching unlimited episodes of Happy Days. Freedom.

When I was 13, I played countless hours of Super Mario with my red-headed neighbor, Scott Merrill. Freedom.

When I was 16, I bought a 24-pack of Zimas and a handle of Absolut Vodka with Daniel S. G*****’s driver’s license. Freedom.

I don’t remember if my mom and dad tried to get me to read a book, eat a vegetable, or stop watching our VHS copy of Fast Times over and over again in our basement, but it didn’t work. I didn’t have to finish my homework. I didn’t have to unload the dishwasher. I didn’t have to take out the trash. I had total freedom to be a “stupid, worthless, no-good, god-damn, free-loadin’ son-of-a-bitch, retarded, big-mouth, know-it-all, asshole, jerk” (Breakfast Club).

I don’t blame my parents for going libertarian on me. My dad was busy coaching baseball and taking an entire neurology department from nothing to something. My mom was busy teaching, working on her photography, running the entire house, and growing six-foot stalks of weed in our backyard. I was also their third child so any regulatory efforts they’d made regarding my older brothers had given way to free enterprise with me.

So now I’m a parent with at least four children of my own and I have no idea how much freedom to give them. As discussed in Saul’s instant cult classic post “Purple Wristbands,” I do believe we should give our kids more freedom to fail but sometimes philosophy collides with pragmatism: Theoretically, I want to give Broosevelt the opportunity to cross the big street near our house by himself but, practically, I don’t want him to die.

So I ask you, dear reader of Saul, father, mother, son, and/or daughter. What should I do? What should we do? What should our parents have done?

How much freedom should we give our children?

A quick heads-up: This post centers on Panini and Broosevelt because OG and Boni have been away at camp and are dead to me.

Should Broosevelt get more than 30 minutes a day on his Nintendo Switch? What if I told you that the only game he plays on there is Fortnite? And what if I told you that because the only game he plays on there is Fortnite, we all refer to his Switch as “the kill machine”? And what if I told you that every time he goes to the basement to play, he says, “Ok, I’m gonna go kill now.” Maybe in order to improve his visual coordination and connect with his friends online, I should let him “kill” as much as he wants. But maybe I should throw his Switch in the trash to stop him from becoming the next school shooter we never suspected would become a school shooter.

Should Panini get more than 4 hours a day on her phone? That’s right, you heard me correctly: She gets a total of four hours a day to check the weather (∼5 minutes), watch YouTube videos on how to French braid (∼10 minutes), watch TikTok videos of lip-syncing 16-year-olds caked in makeup and dressed like whores (∼10 minutes), edit her own photos and videos of her and lip-syncing 16-year-old friends caked in makeup and dressed like whores (∼15 minutes), listen to Chief Keef on Apple Music (∼20 minutes), and send vapid selfies on Snapchat (∼2 hours). When I check my own screen time, hers doesn’t seem that absurd but I still want to grab her phone from her long, bony fingers, chuck it off her 3rd floor balcony, and scream “Get a life!” right in her blue-eyed, button-nose, perfect, pretty, stupid little face.

If I’m too lazy to make Broosevelt a snack when he gets home from camp, he grabs handfuls of chips, cuts himself a giant piece of banana bread, and pours himself a glass of lemonade. If I’m too busy to put some vegetables on Broosevelt’s plate at dinner, he eats pasta and meatballs, and then some more pasta and meatballs, and then some more. If I’m too tired to get Broosevelt some dessert, he makes himself the biggest bowl of ice cream you’ve ever seen and adds two handfuls of chocolate chips. It’s disgusting, he has no self-control, and the freedom he has will, hopefully, result in profound fat-shaming and nutritional changes.

Panini plays tennis outdoors for more than 4 hours a day and she barely wears sunblock. Panini spends the entire day at the beach with her friends and she barely wears sunblock. Panini and I go to the pool for the whole afternoon and she barely wears sunblock. Panini is beautiful, bronze, and blissfully ignorant. I should probably make her lather up in front of me before she leaves the house but maybe I should let her soak up the UV rays, watch her skin turn to leather, and shame her for dying of skin cancer.

Did your parents make you clean your room when you were a kid? Do you make your own kids clean their room? Cuz I don’t know what the hell to do with Panini’s room. Clothes, makeup, bags, shoes, mattresses, crack pipes. It’s unconscionable. Should I ask her to clean up? Demand that she does so? Bribe her? Or just let her be the “Queen of Slime, the Queen of Filth, the Queen of Putrescence!” (The Princess Bride).

And speaking of the Queen of Putrescence, the butt cheeks you guys. The butt cheeks. I just can’t handle the butt cheeks. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed what every 16-year-old girl in the entire country wears when it hits 58 degrees but I can tell you that it involves visible butt cheeks. The shorts are so short that there are, in fact, butt cheeks hanging out from the bottom. I’m not talking about underwear. I’m not talking about bikinis. I’m talking about the actual shorts Panini wears to the pool, to brunch, and even to school. Should I make her put on something more appropriate or bow to the Baroness of Buttcheeks?

Ok, forget the body. Let’s talk about the mind. Boni and Broosevelt still read Percy Jackson but OG rarely reads for pleasure and Panini only reads “books” because we force her to. “Books” is in quotes because Colleen Hoover’s romance novels are more “crap” than “book.” Constant Snapchat, binging The Vampire Diaries, and YA fiction do not a brilliant mind make. Should we give her the freedom to rot in her own stupidity or force great literature upon her to remind her “there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn’t just for fags” (Idiocracy).

Forget the body and the mind. How about cultural and spiritual enrichment? Panini used to play piano. Eventually we let her quit. OG used to play piano. We’re slowly letting her quit. My brothers and I played instruments as kids. My dad, to his great displeasure, ultimately let us quit. Boni is currently playing INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart” and hopefully won’t quit. But Broosevelt is currently playing Europe’s “The Final Countdown” which seems to foreshadow his future fight for the freedom to quit.

Nothing I’ve written so far matters. All that matters is safety. Safety first, last, and always.

So here we go: Panini and her friends ride around the busy streets of Chicago on Lime scooters. No helmet, no instructions, and no clue what they’re doing. Ahhh, the freedom to be a teenager, scoot around town with friends with no care in the world, and get hit by an Amazon delivery truck.

I had my own room when I was in high school and sometimes I could convince a generous lady friend to accompany me to my bedchamber. My parents never said a word. Never told me to keep the door open. Never told me the girl had to leave by 11pm. Never told me to play Lauryn Hill’s remake of Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low.” Panini has had a boy or two in her room. We demand she keeps the door open. We demand the boy leaves by 11pm. But I know there’s nothing I can do and that if that boy is as much of a piece of shit as I was in high school, he’ll figure out a way to “get the prom queen impregnated” (Breakfast Club).

Panini takes the Red Line all over the city. Not sure if you know about the Red Line but it smells like weed, the floors are sticky like weed, and everyone on the train is smoking weed. The Boss tracks Panini’s whereabouts via the magical iPhone but what difference does it make? As I write, Panini and her friends are riding the Red Line somewhere deep downtown where a gentleman with neck tattoos is offering to sell them some weed. And then snatch their Lululemon Everywhere Belt Bags™, steal their $120 Air Force 1’s, and murder all of them and their newfound, short-lived freedom.

Speaking of weed, let me be blunt (pun): I have no idea if I should set a curfew for Panini, smell her breath when she walks in the door, rummage through her sock drawer, keep a careful count of the Modelos in the fridge, and bust her ass the next time the basement smells weird, or if I should look the other way, pretend I didn’t see that empty High Noon on her balcony, and hope that she makes better decisions than her father who, as a 16-year-old, drank more than two Zimas at a Tom Petty concert, found himself biking erratically and alone around midnight on a pitch-black, one-lane road in South Denver, and thought to himself, So this is how it ends.

Let’s be honest. We know how this ends. I’m letting go. I’ve already let go. My kids can do whatever the hell they want. Pretty soon I’ll be hosting Panini’s parties, greeting her butt-cheeked friends at the door, and handing out White Claws. They’ll thank me. I’ll blush, pull them aside, and whisper, “There are no rules in this house. I’m not like a regular mom. I’m a cool mom” (Mean Girls).