Mark KennedyParents, answer me this: Do you ever see yourself reflected in your children?
As my 8-year-old son's personality takes shape, it's apparent we are just alike. More than looks, we also share mannerisms and emotions.
Last weekend, while we were in Nashville for a soccer tournament, I noticed that he is becoming a comedian. When his aunt asked him if he'd ever tried Caesar salad, he quipped: "Seizure salad? Who wants a seizure?"
Later, when he unleashed a bone-rattling sneeze he mused, to no one in particular: "Wow. That was hard work. I've been trying for eight long years to sneeze that out."
Daddy's boy.
When he was a baby, people used to call him mini-Mark - maybe because the shape of our heads and noses are identical. Sometimes when he's sleeping, I study his little round face; he looks like a ventriloquists's dummy version of me.
We share a common temperament, too. Shy. Prone to nervous stomachs. Risk averse. Empathetic.
"Are you happy, Daddy?" he'll ask me out of the blue.
"Sure," I'll say. "How about you?"
We have decided together that our favorite part of the day are the minutes just before we fall asleep. If your personality tilts toward anxiety, sleep is a sweet release.
Having a kid just like you is endlessly amusing - like having a conversation with a miniature version of yourself. But it's also a little unsettling if a child has inherited your nervous nature.
One morning last week he couldn't find his cross-country team shirt before school, which led to a frantic search. We flipped through every hanger in the closet, riffled through his drawers, emptied the clothes dryer and dug through the clothes hamper.
I tried convincing him that he didn't need the shirt to run in the race, but I also knew that he would be sick with worry all day because he would feel "out of uniform." It's the same sort of sideways feeling I get when I forget to wear a belt to work. We finally found the shirt in his brother's closet, and I wiped his tears away as we bolted out the door to school.
In the last few weeks, I've also noticed that he's becoming bullheaded, another of his Daddy's traits. It leaks out as a distrust of authority and a feisty eagerness to stand his ground. As we work through his homework, he searches for perfect answers to subjective questions and becomes argumentative if you suggest an imperfect answer is "good enough."
It's a trap that I've battled my whole life. I find myself being dismissive of other people's opinions if I sense any misapplied logic in their views. That's a fancy way of saying I can be a know-it-all.
But for every character flaw we may share, I can find some redeeming similarity, too.
My mother used to say that, as a child, I never asked for anything for myself. I wouldn't even write a Santa letter, and she'd have to figure things out by looking for dog-eared pages in the Sears catalogue.
My younger son is the same way.
On Sunday, as the soccer tournament wound down, I asked my older son, whose team had just won a medal, if he wanted me to buy him a tournament T-shirt.
"Sure," he said, but without much enthusiasm.
As I paid for his T-shirt, I could feel my younger son - who had been a spectator all weekend - touch me on the back.
"Daddy, can I please have one, too?" he asked meekly.
I knew immediately that it was an act of courage for him to ask.
"Sure you can, buddy," I said.
Anything for Mini-Me.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.