Occasionally I test my sons, to make sure I’ve schooled them in the right ways of good men.  Especially the more nuanced right ways.  Since their father is deceased, this burden has fallen on me. 

I find the best method is to catch them off guard, when they’re involved in something else. 

The other day Alex, my 21-year-old college student son, was deeply immersed in a video game. He was leaning forward on the couch, fingers flying over his game controller. I heard an animatronic voice call someone a “long-eared ass” and I asked him if he was killing donkeys.  

“Elves," he grunted. “Don’t talk to me.” 

This was the perfect time for a test. 

“Son, do you think my new jeans make me look fat?” 

“No,” he said.

Fail!  He answered too quickly and he hadn’t so much as glanced my way.  His father would never have responded that way; he knew the right way to answer that kind of a question. 

“Alex, you didn’t even look at me.  Now stop for a minute and tell me if these jeans make me look fat.” 

“Go away,” he hissed.  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to an elf or me. 

I tried again.  “Your answer is important!  For you.  Now do I look good in these jeans or not.” 

“You’re weird,” he said.  “Why would you ask me that – you’re my mom.  I don’t care what you look like.”  And then he added, “At your age, why would you care what you look like? Let’s face it; you’re past your prime.  Actually, you’re in decline.” 

Supposedly it’s not possible for a human being to swallow her tongue but I did and after I’d fished it out of the back of my throat with a pair of kitchen tongs, I screamed,“Listen you long-eared ass, no girl is ever going to want you when you answer a critical question like that the way you just did!” 

No response. 

“AND I AM NOT IN DECLINE!” 

Still no response. 

“And just because you’re in your prime, doesn’t mean you’re going to be buff and 21 forever.” 

He put down his controller and turned around. Finally, a reaction. 

“Buff. Buff?  What is that?  What is ‘buff’” he asked. 

How could he not know what ‘buff’ was?  “You know, the way you look,” I said.  

The kid is 190 pounds of rock solid muscle.  He looks this way from hour after hour of daily breakdancing, balancing on one arm or the other and contorting himself into strange positions while spinning around on hard surfaces.  

“Mom.  There you go, proving my point and dating yourself.  I’m not ‘buff.’ I’m ‘diesel.’” 

“You’re what?” I shrieked.  “Diesel?  Like Vin? Like fuel?”  I started laughing hysterically.  

“It’s hard to think of you as ‘diesel’ when I remember how fat you were as a baby,” I gasped.  He was the fattest baby I or most other people had ever seen. 

He brushed that off.  “Speaking of the dead and gone past, you weren’t too bad in your prime. 

“How would you know,” I sniffed.  In response he pulled out his wallet. I recognized it right away.  Technically it wasn’t his; it had belonged to his dad.  I didn’t know he was using his father’s wallet.  

He flipped through the pictures Keith had always carried and showed me the very last one.   I remembered it; it was taken not long after we'd started dating.  The two of us were sitting close together on a couch, grinning for the camera, impossibly young, blonde, rail-thin and looking like we didn’t have a care in the world.  And we  didn’t, not then.   

Keith's not blushing; he had a permanent sunburn from working outdoors for so many years.  I forgot how much I LOVED sparkly white eye shadow, all the way to the brow!

“Well, we looked pretty good, didn’t we,” I said after a moment.  

“Yeah you did,” Alex said getting up and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.  “I gotta go practice.” 

Alex’s ‘dieselness’ isn’t just the result of his breakdancing.  He won’t eat anything that’s highly processed, he eschews fast food, he drinks only water or milk.  

Sometimes he seems the diametric opposite of his father in every way, even down to his diet.   He can also be blunt, tight-lipped and infuriatingly stubborn.  But then he goes and does something surprisingly sentimental like carrying Keith’s wallet.   Keith was sentimental too.  

As he headed for the door, he turned and said, “By the way, you look nice in your jeans.” 

But now he’d set the bar higher and I wanted more.  “What about diesel?  Do I look diesel?” 

“No.  Girls only look diesel if they’re bodybuilders.  Personally, I don’t like that look in a girl,” he said, as he headed out.  “Now I just gave you a compliment.  Can’t you be happy with that?” 

That’s something Keith would have said as I pressed him. 

In some ways, at 21 Alex is light years ahead of his father at the same age.  By the time he was 21, Keith had dropped out of college and was involved in a disastrous first marriage.  He floundered for a long time after that.  And he was developing bad habits that would end up literally being the end of him. 

Maybe something in that wallet was rubbing off.   Maybe somehow, Keith was teaching Alex more important things than I ever could.