I'll Do The Driving Today

I'll Do The Driving Today.

My son bunked-off school yesterday. I only found out through one of
those series of jarring, ironic twists of fate sometimes referred to as
'Sods Law': If I hadn't left work early I wouldn't have been in a
position to pick him up from school; If the head teacher hadn't been
standing by the car park entrance I wouldn't have been able to ask her
if she'd seen him pass; If she wasn't also his History teacher she
would have been ignorant of his absence. I mumbled my apologies and
went off to ring his mobile.

When I finally tracked him down he came clean; admitted to his
misdemeanour with a face pale from shock at having been caught out. His
train had been late and he'd missed his connecting bus, he explained.
With half an hour to wait and knowing he'd be late for morning
registration, some urge had led him away from the bus stop and into the
town centre where he'd wandered around all day, not knowing what he was
doing or why?

Was there a problem at school? I asked.
'No'
Bullying or an issue with a teacher? Some homework that hadn't been
completed perhaps?
'No'
Was it the pressure of completing course work, GCSE revision? Was the
pressure becoming too much? I probed.
'No, not really. There's nothing. I don't know,' he said, starting to
cry. 'I just don't know why I did it.'

He isn't a bad boy (this was the first time he'd played truant he said,
and I believed him). He's never been in trouble at school or anywhere
else for that matter. He's overly shy, caring and considerate, mad
about music and rollercoasters. But he's caught between the child that
still loves to play and the student that should be spending more time
in serious study, a young man fast becoming an adult but struggling to
cope with that brain-churning interim, adolescence. Talk to him for any
length of time and it's like he's two distinct characters in one
body.

As I watched him shake his head forlornly at my questions, I remembered
him ten years younger, captivated by a specimen in a small glass tank.
This was in Sea World, Orlando on a typically hot and humid Floridian
day. We were all tired and sticky from rushing around making sure we
caught all the live performances and had ducked into the cool cave-like
interior of the aquarium.

Somewhere between the neon neglig?es of the jellyfish and the seahorses
with their strange, alien armour was a tank containing a small
green/yellow terrapin, indistinguishable in profile from any other
small green/yellow terrapin. I couldn't see what was so beguiling that
it had drawn such concentration from a boy who usually glanced
momentarily at each exhibit before rushing ahead to the next. I
crouched beside him and looked a little closer. The terrapin turned
slightly and I realised what had caught my son's attention. The
terrapin had two heads, both perfectly formed and independent of each
other; one pair of ink-dot eyes stared back at me, the other pair back
at my son.

'You know what the one on the left is saying to the one on the right,
Dad?' he asked. 'I'll do the driving today,' and off he skipped.

I laughed so much I cried.