Red, White & Blue

This is my son, Angus.
This is the photo I'm saving for his wedding day.
I took it last weekend on our camping trip to Balsam Lake. It was Canada's first long weekend of precious summer and I share it with you now because it's the States' first long weekend of summer and I thought Gus' colour scheme seemed appropriate. Red berries, white whipped cream, blue hair.
I didn't want to let him get it dyed blue. I tried every reason I could think of to talk him out of it.
1. You have beautiful blonde hair; why do you want to screw it up?
2. People will tease you.
3. Old ladies have blue hair. Next thing you know you'll be schlepping about in knee-highs and support hose.
Finally I realized it's just hair. It'll grow back. And since I radically changed the colour of my own hair, I can't really talk.
Gus has had peacock-coloured hair for a month or so now and I'm actually getting used to it.
I think my concern about the hair wasn't anything to do with hair. I worry about who he is hanging out with. I wonder if the rebellious hair colour means he's rebellious in other parts of his life: is he experimenting with drugs? Is he smoking? Is he drinking? These are the things that really freak me out. He's only 14 and I see so many young people who have ruined their lives with oxycontin and drunk driving. And I sure hope he never gets anyone pregnant or quits school.
His hormones are kicking in and he seems angry a lot. He fights with his brother all the time – it just drives me up the wall. He lies to us with a straight face about unimportant things – all I can do is hope he's telling us the truth about the important things. I remember being like this. Man, I wouldn't go back to being a teenager for anything. It was probably the worst time of my life. So much rides on getting through this trying time unscathed. All I can do is try to show him the way, pick my battles and keep the lines of communication open.
Some days, though, I find it overwhelming; depressing.
It sure makes me appreciate what my own parents went through.

By the way, everybody's been complaining about Blogger lately, and I'm no exception. I have found, however, that the problems disappear if I switch Browsers. For example, I usually use Safari but last week when Blogger took a big dump and then sort of recovered, my Safari left me stranded. I couldn't comment on other people's blogs, I couldn't post to my own.
The first fix I tried was updating all the software on my computer. Then I switched to Firefox. As a result, I can comment on any Blogger site and post to my own without problems.
I'm not saying that justifies Blogger's screw-ups because I'm just as pissy as everybody else, but it does help.

I've been working on a summer publication at work these last two weeks and our theme has been summer music. As a result this song has been running a loop in my head. It speaks to me of golden summer days and, hey, it's about hair!