Back to Table of Contents

Laura Smith Porter
Band of Brothers

The doorbell rings.

“The guys are here,” I call to my son as I go to the back door. He’s in the den, playing a baseball game on the computer.

Two fifteen-year-old boys are standing on the porch. Each is wearing an electric guitar strapped to his back in a black case and carrying a large amplifier.

“Men,” I say to them in my customary greeting.

“Hey,” they answer in deep voices that still surprise me.

I have known one of these boys since he was in the first grade, long before he had shaggy hair and braces. He is my son’s best friend. The other one, also with long hair but post-braces, has been around only since seventh grade, when he moved to our town. He has always been tall, but in the past couple of months, we have watched him sail well past six feet.

They pause in the hall to kick off sneakers that look as though they could fit a pair of linebackers.

“The boy around?” asks the one with braces.

“On the computer.”

They nod and troop through the kitchen, banging the amplifiers against their knees…

Excerpted from I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
Copyright 2005 by Laura Smith Porter