by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

My son started ninth grade Wednesday, his first year at Claremont High School. The youngest of four, he’s the last to wind his way through Claremont’s public schools. We’ve no more middle schoolers, and have long since said goodbye to the sweetness of elementary school. Soon my boy will be driving himself to CHS and staking out his independence before flying the coop for college. Presumably.

I got a glimpse of what’s to come last week at CHS registration. He pretty much did everything on his own. I was just there to pay for stuff. He was nervous and excited. I was thrilled for him, but in the back of my mind I knew this was the beginning of the end of his childhood, a melancholy realization.

My youngest child is careening toward adulthood.

It was a taste of what I imagine empty nesters feel. And though I’m forever daydreaming about how my wife Lisa and I will spend our retirement years traveling, the truth is with California’s astronomical housing costs I’m not sure our nest will ever be empty. And that’s okay. They can stick around until they find their path. I imagine it may involve moving somewhere more hospitable to 20-something strivers on the aspirational end of the economic ladder.

In the meantime, I have the hopes of every parent with a kid entering high school: that my son will have memorable experiences, spend four years with a supportive, kind group of friends, and avoid the terrifying pitfalls of the modern American adolescence, primarily fentanyl.

Grades are important, of course, but “Cs get degrees,” as the saying goes, and there’s nothing wrong with junior college for all that required coursework. This is not to say I don’t want him to endeavor for high marks. I do. It’s just that grade point average is not the only thing that matters in high school, college, or life. See “Booksmart” for a hilarious treatise on the subject.

It’s not that I’m rooting for my boy’s high school years to be devoid of challenges, academic or otherwise. That’s unrealistic. Truth is, there are lessons to be learned from the emotional yin and yang of high school: falling in love, being rejected, falling out with friends, finding new friends, these experiences bolster our ability to persevere through tough times. Some kids learn about heartbreak early, and arrive at high school with a tougher hide. Others, perhaps the luckier ones, are more fragile. The hope is they learn that no feeling is forever, that better days always come with time.

Though in my experience kids are at their least empathetic in middle school, high schoolers can also be pretty cruel. In my hazy memory, any deviation from the norm sets one up for ridicule. And ridicule in 2024 is nothing like it was when I was in high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The brutality of social media, smartphones, livestreaming, and chat groups can make modern adolescence a waking nightmare. I’ve had a slight glimpse into this with my own children, and the real-time impact on a young person’s mental health can be frightening.

But my son says bullying is not nearly as bad as I remember it to be in the ancient days of my youth. He says kids generally don’t really look the other way when people are being picked on, that they are more likely to stand up for those on the receiving end of cruelty. That’s reassuring news, and I hope it’s true.

I hope a lot of stuff is true. I hope he passes through the gauntlet of high school with his thoughtfulness, optimism, and humor intact. I hope when he meets someone and falls in love, that person is kind. And when his heart is broken — aren’t our hearts always broken in high school? — I hope he has good friends to lean on, and that the sadness doesn’t consume him for long. I hope he finds a creative outlet — writing, music, art, whatever — as I’ve found using negative experiences as fuel for creativity to be a great means of processing pain.

My son and I have had a great many discussions about fentanyl. He knows pills, cocaine, and weed can all contain the deadly synthetic opioid, and that kids are dying every day, some from just one pill. I hope he remembers those talks.

So yes, prepping a 14-year-old for high school ain’t what it used to be. Some of the discussions are quite literally about life and death. Such is the modern American adolescence.

I send him off to high school with the overarching hope that he will find his tribe, and his vibe, that his experiences will be memorable, and most importantly, he will be smart, and have fun.