“I have a headache,” says my sixteen year-old son, as he climbs into the back of my car and closes the door.
I’m not surprised; last night I saw an image of him and his friends on his Snapchat story, a photograph taken at night through a greasy lens. He stands tall, arms folded, his friends over his shoulder, hand signs at the camera: a V-sign here, a bird flipped there. Blurred exposure. A girl - strappy top, long blonde hair - laughs and shields her eyes from the camera, all of them captured in the flash of an iPhone.
A group of friends, a park at night. Alcohol begged, stolen and borrowed from older brothers and kitchen cupboards. That one friend, progressed enough in puberty to have cultivated a wispy moustache, sent to the local corner shop with a tenner to blag some cans. Making memories on cold grass.
I don’t possess memories like these. Growing up in an ultra-religious household meant my relationship with alcohol was restricted to a thimbleful of Cointreau at Christmas, and maybe a glass of house red at a wedding. I never went to parks at night with friends, never perched on swings and climbing frames swigging cider, never improvised adulthood in half-lit places.
As a result, I don’t quite know how to react as we drive through the village and my son nurses a hangover. It’s all part of growing up, a voice tells me, but it’s not my voice because this never happened to me. He’s going to become an alcoholic, says another voice, this one very much mine, the worrier. He’s falling into the wrong crowd.
The worrier in me often wins out. A few days ago my son told me he’d had a can of Monster (an energy drink which is essentially an arm’s length away from poison). Instantly, I send him an Instagram reel which illustrates all the chemicals and sugar contained in a single can.
Bro, he replies. A three-letter word, but I sense the undercurrent. Stop worrying so much, it says. Relax. Give me space.
Later that same car journey my son tells me that he started chatting to a girl last night. He seems proud - lanky, a little nerdy, he’s never been particularly confident in front of the opposite sex - but his expression falls when he recounts that she ended up talking to someone else, and asking them to walk her home.
This is something we can all identify with. The flutter of talking to someone you find attractive, the heartbreak of rejection. The feeling that this is how you will feel forever, the crushing weight of sadness despite knowing that this is just part of growing up.
Fortunately my son is the creative type, a drummer in a school band and a keen lyricist, so in the early morning he channelled his melancholy into a set of song lyrics and sent them to his bandmate and best friend.
And maybe he hasn’t fallen into the wrong crowd. Maybe he’s right where he needs to be, for his friend responds with Are you okay? You sound really depressed and You can always talk to me if you need someone, and as we arrive home and get out of the car I realise that whilst I might not recognise the shape of his world, I know one thing: that it’s okay to grow up and make mistakes, as long as you have the right people around you.
You sound like a pretty grounded dad. It's a normal worry, and probably unfounded. You're doing ok. Love, Virg
Your writing always touches a nerve that needs to be tickled more often in society. I see so much of humanity in this article, for example, and hear a message that can cure a thousand illnesses in the same.