This is from last February 17th. Oh what a February that was: the tyranny of high school admissions and such. So glad that’s over for now. Happy to report that Teen Spirit has settled in nicely at his new school (not so new anymore).

Smartmom still can’t believe she has a thirteen year old son. It seems
just yesterday Teen Spirit was bundled into a stroller bound for Mommy
and Me, a toddler exercise class they used to attend on Sixth Avenue
near Lincoln Place. One of the girls they met in that class just had
her Bat Mitzvah. Another girl looks impossibly hip slinking down
Seventh Avenue with her friends.

It’s like someone pressed the fast forward button and all those cute babies became cute teenagers at a too rapid speed.

All
this comes to mind because today will be an important and not
altogether pleasant day for many of these former toddlers: the
acceptance and rejection letters from the specialized high schools will
be handed out at my son’s middle school.

Yay or nay: Stuyvesant,
Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, LaGuardia and the others have decided
who’s in and who’s out. A rite of passage of childhood in New York
City, it will be a day of pain for some and exhilaration for others.
Hearts beating fast as they open their letters, Smartmom can only
imagine what must be going through their minds.

And at school there’s no one there to remind them that it’s just a test, just a school, just a stupid education system. 

In
the coming weeks, the other high schools will be sending their letters
out. Fingers crossed, fingernails bitten to the pulp, parents and teens
wait, their futures in the balance.

In the midst of this
Darwinian shake-out, Teen Spirit and the other thirteen-year-old Park
Slopers exist in a universe of their own. They instant message each
other, hang out on-line at Xanga, practice with their bands, eat pizza
at Pinos.

They walk down Seventh Avenue feeling the force of
their emerging selves: independent and so very alive. It’s a mixed bag
these teenage years.

A Mixed bag.