Check another milestone off the old teenage “rite of passage” list for our son Jackson. “I don’t understand what the purpose of prom is” he stated a week or so prior to the arrival of the big day. That wasn’t the end of his misgivings with the affair, and as the weeks turned to days he went on to lodge such complaints as, “this is all a waste of time and money” and “I’ll never agree to this again” and a litany of other angstful teenage remarks which I’ve grown quite accustomed to ignoring.

The remarks, like his dirty socks, can be counted on to be strewn about, but I have the choice of when or if I want to pick them up. To paraphrase Victor Frankl, “Between stimulus (dirty socks, remarks, etc.) and response there is a space, and within that space we have the power to choose” and I choose to smile and nod like an oblivious idiot. Which I might very well be, but that is beside the point.

He agreed to put himself through this ordeal a few months ago. In teenage time “a few months” is a long stretch of eternity that, in their mind, has about as much probability of coming into fruition as going riverboat gambling or deep sea fishing with Barney the dinosaur. Something I would agree to if the fish we were seeking had an insatiable hankering for fuzzy purple bait.

I’m not much of a fisherman, but I have some repressed Barney hostility that needs to be dealt with. I won’t bore you with anymore of the dark and twisted, but completely justified, desires of my Rainbow Randolph alter ego.

The standard attire society has deemed acceptable for young men to wear as they step onto this rung of fun to ascend a bit closer to the wobbly uncertain heights of adulthood is, of course, a tuxedo or a suit of some sort. We opted to buy him a suit rather than rent a tux, as the price isn’t much different, and I wanted him to have something nice to wear when he elopes with the elderly widow down the street.

To save him the anguish of limping around in shiny plastic ill-fitting rental shoes all night, I loaned him my wing-tips for half the cost. I threw in the necktie tying seminar for free.

The young women have much more latitude in regards to the plumage they wiggle into, the un-sensible shoes they totter about on, and the plethora of accessories, hair thingy’s, nails (fingers and toes), flowers (hair, wrist, bouquet, etc.), handbags, and several square feet of makeup they tirelessly adorn themselves with. So it goes.

Once I told the angstful one to get off of his computer (for the fourth time) and get dolled up, roughly three minutes passed, and he was standing in the kitchen fully dressed. Still lodging complaints, but fully dressed, hair done, and…well that’s about it for us men folk when it comes to getting gussied up. We’re just there to carry our date’s un-sensible shoes after they’ve walked in them for the first four steps of the evening.

In the midst of all the posing and picture taking I could see that our son was enjoying himself, and as a parent that’s pretty much what we hope to see. The morning after prom I asked him, “So, did you figure out what prom is for?” He said, “No. I had fun, but it still seems like a waste of money.” Whether he meant to or not, he omitted “time” in his post-prom reflection, and concluded it only to be a waste of money.

Money comes and goes many times over in life, but time, well time just goes (too quickly), so I’m glad he felt it was an enjoyable use of his time.

Watching him grow and navigate this world is an enjoyable use of my time…and money.