Opportunity Cost

You’ve seen her, right? The frustrated 86-year-old woman with grey hair and wrinkly skin who, for the last 15 minutes, has been writing, editing, and preparing to send one single message. The text on her phone is in 24-point font and she’s typing the letters one by one with her two gnarled, arthritic index fingers. She should be doing the crossword puzzle, knitting a sweater for her great granddaughter, walking slowly around the neighborhood with her slowly dying friends, or baking a pie and forgetting to turn off the oven, but instead she’s sitting alone at the dining room table, bent over her phone with a furrowed brow, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, desperately trying to send this one message about the nagging pain in her chest.

You’ve seen him, right? The lost 14-year-old-boy at the bus stop with his heavy backpack, fluffy hair, black hoodie, grey sweats, and white crocs, head and neck at a 45 degree angle, concave back, and T-Rex arms, hunched over his phone as he waits for the bus, vapid look on his face as one YouTube Short after another sucks him deeper and deeper into the abyss. He should be playing hacky sack, talking to his friend about the Cubs game, or fantasizing about the girl who sits next to him in math class so, right then and there at the bus stop, he pops a little boner which he has to slyly tuck into the waistband of his shorts. But there’s no little boner today, just 23-second Short after 23-second Short, optimally curated to inevitably lead him and every other 14-year-old boy down the path toward the Manosphere which ends with self-loathing, misogyny, and no girl or woman ever touching his stifled little boner.

You’ve seen her, right? The obsessive 44-year-old mom who, even before her alarm goes off, checks the weather and her email. She should be rolling over to snuggle her man and maybe get an extra few minutes of sleep and tenderness, but instead she’s worried about whether or not she should get her kid a college counselor because she just saw on Facebook that her friend whom she hasn’t spoken to in four years and who lives eight states away has a kid who was accepted to University of Whatever and we’re all so proud of her journey. Later that morning, after berating her colleagues for not using person-centered language, she takes a break from her soul-scorching zooms and advances to level 2,336 in Wordscapes even though she should step outside, get some sun, and ensure she reaches her daily steps goal. That afternoon she micromanages her kids’ snack content and social plans via text message even though she should be entirely focused on the email she is sending to the principal about the dangerous cracks in the gaga pit. That evening while she’s cooking an environmentally sustainable dinner, she watches a video montage of one of her kids that Google Photos has, without being asked, created just for her and, without being asked, sent to her. She should be listening to an old Billy Joel album and drinking half a glass of wine but the glossy images of her child accompanied by soft instrumentals is like catnip. At dinner, she excuses herself to take a “really important call” even though she should be listening to her daughter’s story about the weird substitute teacher who kept touching everyone. After dinner, she reads an article in her Apple News trough about hemorrhoids. She should be laughing at Nailed It! with her family but the notification on her home screen about two great college counselors in her area is impossible to ignore. That night when she is brushing her teeth, her phone is face up on the bathroom counter. She should be looking in the mirror, checking her skin for precancerous moles, but she really doesn’t want to miss that dish towel sale on Amazon. She gets in bed and checks her email one last time. She should be listening to how hard her man’s day was and offering sterile hand relief but instead she watches a couple of deeply concerning YouTube videos of Trump and has trouble falling asleep.

You’ve seen him, right? The distracted 28-year-old man-child at the gym with big biceps and wireless Beats headphones. He’s on his phone between and even during workout sets, scrolling through his Twitter feed, retweeting, and sharing with his friends particularly outrageous videos of women fighting in public. His algorithm is locked in. He should be making eye contact with some of the lonely young ladies in the gym but he’s too busy swiping right on the lonely young ladies on his phone. He’s also texting his friends about who the Bulls drafted and whether or not they would have sex with Maya Rudolph. He should be deep in reflection, thinking about his widowed mother and feeling guilty about missing leg day, but instead he’s calculating how much more money he can afford to lose on DraftKings but still have enough for a vial of coke at the strip club.

You’ve seen him, right? The lonely 58-year-old man who texts when he’s driving, who watches TikTok when he’s taking a shit, and who has a paid subscription to schmornhub.com. When he’s in the car, he should be listening to NPR but the red lights are everywhere and he texts fast. When he’s in the bathroom, he should be reading that article from The Atlantic about DOGE’s death database but the TikTok vids on DIY man caves are awesome. When he’s jerking off, he should be doing it for free but it’s so damn convenient to have his favorites armed and ready, especially in his car at red lights. He had his kid set a screen time password on his phone but he always overrides it. He should be laboriously reading hundreds of pages a month instead of spending hours a day on Reddit. He should be sarcastically/sincerely sexting his wife instead of anonymously joining chat rooms. He should be drinking beers with his friends instead of texting pictures of beer in their group chat. He should be at the park with his daughter or shooting hoops with his son or grilling veggie burgers on his deck instead of lecherously ogling scantily dressed Czech nubiles who share group selfie dance videos on the dark web.

You’ve seen her, right? The morose 20-year-old college girl lying in the fetal position on her bed with her phone propped up next to her in landscape mode. She should be gazing into the soft brown eyes of another 20-year-old college girl with whom she’s just had her first lesbian experimentation, but instead she’s binging Love Island on Peacock. She should be writing that essay on neo-colonial capitalism but ChatGPT is armed and ready. She was planning to go to the gym to work off that freshman 15 but she ended up getting sucked into confidence-crushing “Get Ready With Me” Instagram reels of plastic influencers yapping to no one and everyone about their skincare and makeup routines. No worries, she promised herself she’d do a six-minute ab workout later on YouTube. She also spent time today on Snapchat which she’s used less since finishing high school but still comes back to sometimes because it feels like a warm, familiar blanket of heroin FOMO. She should check out that lecture in the student center on fourth wave feminism but she’d prefer to just watch the TED talk online. Her parents used to control her screen time but now she’s, technically, an adult who, theoretically, can self-manage. Sometimes it occurs to her to text her dad for help but she has too much pride and shame.

You’ve seen him, right? The inattentive 10-year-old boy up in his room, on his bed, hiding under his sheets, face three inches from his phone, eyes wide open like A Clockwork Orange, mesmerized by the complexities of Crossing the Mexican Border in Roblox. It’s his sixth hour on Roblox today. He got access to the old iPhone 6 floating around the house and figured out the wifi. His parents never turned on screen time limits so the boy sneaks away every opportunity he gets to play Steal A Brainrot on Roblox. He should be juggling a soccer ball in the driveway or riding his rusted bike in the rat-strewn alley or reading Percy Jackson for the seventh time or playing ping-pong with his friend or watching Colombia versus Uzbekistan with his sister or playing Monopoly with his dad or selling overpriced lemonade at a lemonade stand or looking through the comics, but all his friends are on Roblox too and it’s about 1,000,000 times more Beavis and Butthead fun fun FUN than Monopoly or lemonade. His thumbs hurt from the fast-paced clicking and he has a headache from the backlight of the phone but he has $20 octillion in Grow a Garden and the chats flying back and forth with his friends are dopamine city, so piano and dessert and showering and pooping can wait. 

___

What would all of us be doing if we weren’t on our phones?

An Open Letter to My Son

Dear Broosevelt,

I just want to start by saying that you, my son, are the best boy in the whole entire world.

You’re kind. You’re chill. You’re handsome. You’re smart. You always put away your laundry. You usually practice piano. You sometimes shower. You set the table. You clear your plate. You smother your mother and me with hugs and kisses. You give your sisters money when they need it. You pass the ball to the open man. You don’t swing at bad pitches. You don’t wear your cleats in the house. You only curse with your friends. You’re a good boy. The best boy.

Once when you were about five and pestering your twin sister because pestering sisters is what 5-year-old boys do, your frustrated, anti-boy mother said, “He’s just a bad kid.” I still give her shit for that ridiculously inaccurate assessment because you are a good kid. The best kid.

One day when you’re a father, you’ll realize not only how much I love you but also how scary it is to raise a son. Raising girls is easy: I let your mother do most of the work and, as my friend Sam likes to say, my only job is to keep your sisters off the pole. With a son, however, all the pressure is on me. I need to make sure you’re sensitive yet strong, sweet yet resilient, and humble yet confident. I don’t know if I’m doing any of those things, but I do know a few things my little man, first of which is that you need to grow a pair.

I’m sorry, Broosevelt. I apologize. I’m a little upset. Unlike your father and at least one of your sisters, you are a genuinely good person. But good doesn’t mean meek. When a waiter takes your order, speak up and look him in the eye. When your stupid coach tells you to slow it down but you see a teammate wide open under the basket, make the pass. When your sisters ask for even more money, say no. Be strong. Be bold. Be brave.

I love you and I even love some of your little dufus buddies, but you can’t stop your friends from tearing the hoop off your wall. You can’t stop your friends from grabbing handfuls of chocolate chips. You can’t stop your friends from barging through the front door, trashing the basement, and eating goldfish on the couch even though you know that no one can ever eat goldfish on the couch and that your friends can’t be over when mommy and daddy aren’t home. And, yes, I know that you calling us mommy and daddy is emasculating but, like I said, I don’t really know how to raise you so it’s time for you to stand up to your friends on your own.

Your friends aren’t bullies; they’re a bunch of simps who would get destroyed if it weren’t 2026, the softest era known to man. They cry on the basketball court, they bring their lovies to sleepovers, and they play cartoon games on their phones. Yet you, my dear son, are the one who often gets pushed around, at least when it comes to the goldfish. You feel insecure when your friends tease you for having a big forehead. You feel sad when you miss three questions on a science test and your friend calls you dumb. You feel powerless when your friends kick the ball over the sport court. I know you have feelings, I validate those feelings, and I want you, my son, to have, be aware of, and express those feelings. But I also want you to just grow a pair.

Speaking of awareness, the second thing I need you to do is wake up, dude. Listen. Look around. Sim lev. Dry yourself off before you get out of the shower. Stop using my towel and, if you do use my towel, bring it back to my bathroom and hang it up. Don’t leave it on the carpet in the middle of your room. Keep the food on your plate and off your shirt. Get your hands out of the chicken. Brush your teeth before you leave the house. Eat a vegetable. Pay attention to the conversation at the dinner table and in the car and any time you’re with other human beings who have words coming out of their mouths. Sometimes when you’re sitting next to me at dinner, I secretly watch you eat, deep in your thoughts. I feel happy because I know you’re counting how many games out of first the Cubs are but I also feel sad because I know my son is lost in the clouds.

Put the toilet seat down after you pee. Don’t leave your filthy socks next to the toaster. Hug me but don’t choke me. Just pay attention man. Focus. Your grandpa was a world-renowned physician who went glassy-eyed in long conversations. Your uncle is a PhD who has lost his wallet 37 times. Your father is a famous writer who falls asleep anywhere at any time. I see my own genetic shortcomings in your general cluelessness but I know you can be an even better version of the men who came before you.

Maybe you didn’t notice, but it mattered when you had three missing assignments. You should have felt scared, worked your butt off to finish them, and never missed an assignment again. Maybe you didn’t notice, but it mattered when you failed miserably at yout piano recital. You should have felt shame, practiced hard as hell, and crushed it the next time. Maybe you didn’t notice, but it mattered when you walked seven hitters. You should have felt embarrassed, thrown me 100 pitches the next day, and struck those motherfuckers out in the next game. I feel awful when you fail but I’m not sure I can, or should, help you any more. It’s time for you to help yourself, my boy. Much of my own life has been acknowledging and learning from my mistakes. Now it’s your turn: wake up, smell the coffee, and fail better.

And speaking of failing, my boy, my precious boy whom I may be failing as a father, I need you to step up your game here and there. I tried to teach you how to tie your shoes but you still run around on the soccer field with your laces everywhere. I tried to teach you how to hold and use a pencil but I can’t read anything you write. I tried to teach you how to put on sunblock but you look like a clown with special needs. Your grandpa was a practiced violinist who couldn’t do his own laundry. Your uncle is a former college athlete who was banned from his own mother’s kitchen because he is a walking disaster. Your father is a hirsute sex-pot who can’t get his chest hair out of the sink. Broosevelt, my job, I think, is to make you better than all of us. You can be a doctor, a writer, a musician, an athlete, and even a sex-pot if you just put your mind to it and decide that you will be a better man, and ultimately a better dad, than I am.

In your soccer team’s tournament championship, your coach asked who was gonna take the first penalty kick. You demonstrated bravery by saying you would. You demonstrated awareness by knowing your teammates needed your leadership. You demonstrated competence by making the shot. The young man who volunteered to take that shot is the best version of you, the one I’ve played a minor role in cultivating and the one you can now choose to be every single day, especially when your friends are eating the goldfish.

Love,

Daddy

P.S. Part of being brave is being okay with being naked. You don’t have to be an exhibitionist like your sex-pot father but I will be very upset if we can’t play grab-ass in the shower anymore.