I was wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them…

When I was younger, I swore up and down I would be a “cool” parent.

I would be “hip,” I would be familiar with all the latest music, fashion, lingo, etc.

As a teen, I thought my parents were about as “square” (now there’s a dated term) as they come.

I was going to be a father admired by my children. Shoot, I would maybe even “bust a move” (Very 80s, I know…) with them some time.

But something happened along the way…

I can only attribute it to a rather long nap I took one afternoon recently.

I think I woke up sorta, I dunno, how do you put it…UNCOOL.

It started when my oldest son, Myles, who is 18, told me he was “getting a new system for his truck.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “a system. That’s really cool.”

“Well?” he asked. “Whatta you think?”

I shrugged.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he queried.

“Sure!” I said. “It’s a, you know, a ‘system’ for vehicles. A performance thing, right?”

“No, dad,” he said, “it’s a SOUND system.”

“I knew that,” I shot back. “I was just messin’ with you.”

Myles frowned and walked away.

A couple of days later I was sitting the in living room and heard a commotion outside.

Myles had pulled into the driveway.

I ran outside to see what was wrong.

“Is there something wrong with your truck?” I asked.

He frowned.

“It was making some kind of noise,” I said. “Have you checked your oil?”

“Was it this?” Myles asked, reaching toward his dashboard.

BOOM, BUH-BUH, BUH BOOM, BUH-BUH, BUH BOOM!

“What IS that?” I screamed, covering my ears.

“That’s my jams, yo,” he said.

Jams?

YO?

“How can you listen to that…stuff?” I yelled in his general direction.

“Watch this!” he shouted.

Myles ran around to the back of his vehicle, opened the back hatch, and pointed at a seemingly refrigerator-sized, grey, carpet-covered box.

With the uh…”music” still shaking the leaves of nearby trees, he took a quarter and threw it on a speaker mounted in the vibrating box.

The quarter bounced up and down with the beat of the music.

“Ain’t that cool?” Myles asked.

“Kinda’ a waste of a quarter,” I spat over the sonic blast.

“I thought you liked music, dad,” Myles protested.

“That’s not…”music,’ “ I retorted.

“Dang!,” Myles complained. “You’re starting to sound like your dad.”

I was thinking to myself that if my head/back/stomach/legs/

feet didn’t hurt so bad, I would surely take my son to the pavement.

“Myles,” I said with exasperation, “Do you really think I’m…”un-cool”?

Now, Myles is pretty honest, and as my first-born, he shoots pretty straight with his “old man.”

He looked around, looked down at this feet, and then at me.

Myles sighed, and said, “Well, dad…”

And the next thing I heard shook me…literally.

BOOM, BUH-BUH, BUH BOOM, BUH-BUH, BUH BOOM!