One day last week, my 13-year-old son threw his backpack in the car and plopped down in the front seat.
“How’s your day going?” he asked.
“OK,” I said. “How about yours?”
Mark Kennedy“Good,” he said.
We do our best communicating when we’re not making eye contact.
“I’ve got a science project to do,” he announced.
“What is it?” I said, fearful I would be up all night building a rainforest out of Playmobil shrubberies.
“I need 10 bugs,” he said. “Ten different kinds.”
“Dead or alive?” I asked.
“Dead,” he said.
My son explained that he wouldn’t need these insects for a few weeks. But knowing how he tends to procrastinate, I had a vision of our whole family eventually crawling around the back yard, looking for beetles.
“Well, let’s get a jump on this,” I said. “Let’s keep our eyes out for dead bugs on the side of the road so we can begin to build your collection.”
Looking back, I’m not sure why I thought dead insects would pile up on the side of the highway.
Later I had a bright idea: “Why don’t you see if you can get your little brother to help,” I told my older son, “and pay him 50 cents a bug?”
“That’s actually a really good idea,” he said, smiling like a businessman who had just discovered outsourcing.
“How are you supposed to kill the bugs?” I asked.
“Just put them in a jar until they die, I guess,” he said.
Later that night, he rushed into the family room.
“Daddy, I found a bug on the back door,” he said breathlessly. “Hurry. What can I put it in?”
I jumped up from my Catnapper. Realizing that Mom was not home to protest, I pointed him to the Tupperware in a kitchen cabinet.
“Grab a container,” I said. “What kind of bug is it?”
“It’s one of those stick bugs,” he said excitedly.
He gently scraped the bug off into the bowl and pressed down the plastic lid.
“Good,” I thought, “one bug down and nine to go.”
I settled back into my chair and my son got back to his iPad. Then, a few minutes later, my 8-year-0ld son arrived in the family room.
“Why is there a bug in a bowl in the kitchen?” he said.
“It’s for your brother’s science project,” I said, hoping he would drop the subject.
“But it’s going to die,” he frowned.
I looked at my older son, and he shrugged, as if to say, “You’re the daddy.”
“Well,” I explained. “It’s OK to kill a bug if it’s for science class.”
“It’s not OK with me,” my younger son said. “I don’t want it to die. It’s going to stuffocate in that bowl.”
I’m not often speechless, but I literally did not know what to say next.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
With that, he extended his lower lip and and pulled a throw blanket over his head.
I was touched by his compassion for the innocent bug – but not enough to set it free. I have learned to hate “project panic,” and dadgummit, we were being proactive here.
An hour passed and my younger son darted back into the family room.
“Hey,” he said excitedly. “What happened? The bug got away.”
I turned to my older son.
“Did you .?” I said.
He nodded.
“I didn’t want it to die either,” he said, apologetically. “About half the kids in the room were like me, Daddy. We didn’t want to kill the bugs.”
So, I guess in comings days we will be searching for bugs who have died of natural causes and whose families are willing to sign over their little bodies to science. These unpredictable – but inevitable – micro-dramas are the most interesting part of parenting.
Tender hearts, it seems, run in our family; and I’m not inclined to harden them.
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.