So, I stride through the front door at day’s end with the groceries for supper and here’s how I find my 11-year-old:
Sprawled on the sofa, spoiling his appetite with a bowl of cereal. He’s in his day-and-night casual wear, swimming trunks because he had just been in the backyard playing in the sprinkler with his dog, he said, and his pajama top because, oops, he hadn’t noticed.

Commencing launch of parental discipline mode. Deep breath. And in five, four, three, two...

But no. One of the oddball quirks of journalism is that sometimes, albeit rarely, we in the business take note of events that surround us, causing thought. For me it has been just such a week, with two happenings, one to my right and the other to my left, in Alberta and Manitoba, about little Canadians growing up and about big Canadians growing down.
R.J. Hawkey Elementary School outside Calgary is about to launch a first-ever program in which Grade 2-4 students will be sorted into specialized classrooms according to personal interests, either “the arts,” “scientific inquiry,” “sports” or “humanitarian/environment.” Students or, more likely, parents will select what is essentially a major, as in college, for a head start on high achievement in a future career. “We’ve got kids who, at a very young age, already have identifiable interests.” Principal Don Hoch told Postmedia News. “Why wouldn’t we capitalize on that?”

Cowboy, ballerina, doctor, rock star ‑ Principal Hoch asked, so now I’m telling him ‑ astronaut, teacher, pro skateboarder: the dreams of an eight-year-old change weekly.  Short of “humanitarian environmentalist,” or possibly “environmental humanitarian” (whatever that is) (federally funded, would be my guess), what to be as a grown-up ought to remain an option throughout childhood, like one’s favorite food, known only after sampling hundreds of dishes, none left untasted. Here’s wishing Alberta all the best in 2031 with that new Bow River freeway bridge designed by the high-achieving engineer who hates his job with a gut-wrenching passion and says to hell with the double-check for stress loads on the secondary support beams before heading home to finish his macramé for the craft show. You and I, we have other business today, out east in...

Manitoba. Government liquor stores next door are taking their knocks for stocking two new flavoured boozes, Caramilk Cream Liquor and, excuse me ‑ eee-YEW ‑ Caramilk Cream Coolers. Angry critics claim that the products are aimed at teenagers and that young children could mistaken the bottles for candy drinks. Maybe so, maybe not. Government’s self-regulated monopoly bootleg operation is legally entitled to sell adults any hybrid candy-bar hooch that springs from research and development: “Kit-Kut,” “Urp, Henry,” “Big Jerk,” or “Easy Marie.” No, the bigger question here is:
What adult would even want a chocolate bar-flavored cocktail?

Today’s grown-ups, I answer, and not without some shame, being a cohort of the demographic. We do engage in regressive behaviors that never in a zillion years would have occurred to our gracefully aging parents. Such as paying $6 for a take-out cup of lava guava latte choco frappee that heaven forbid tastes like coffee, but rather, yippee-doodles, yummy hot chocolate. Such as Botox, hair implants and classic rock radio. Such as spending $278 for a fan replica Grey Cup ring of a football team on which our sole athletic contribution was not some critical, second-down quarterback sack, but rather: two hundred, seventy-eight beans. That’s some serious toy time make-believe right there, old boy.
The more we horn in on the territory of youth, the further we seem to push the kids out.

Honestly. What did I expect from my son when I arrived home? That he would be busy in the kitchen? Perhaps dicing shallots for the goulash recipe he saw in the newspaper, his late-afternoon relaxation read after four hours of simplifying fractions, because experts who sell tutoring services now say that without intensive summer study, he stands to lose 30 per cent of his current education?

No. My son was exactly where any 11-year-old ought to be on a hot summer day in early August, which was kicked back, disheveled and blissfully free of responsibility. Time for obligation will come soon enough, with the start of Grade 6, and doubly so way too soon, with graduation from high school.

I could tell the boy was braced for a scolding, though.

Ahem.“Very well. Carry on, lad.”

Oh, the drop-jawed, bug-eyed look of shocked surprise he gave me!

Hilarious. Turns out one can have fun as the grown-up, the adult, and without pretending to be anything else.