my son is cool

Not cool in the "cool kid at school" sense. Thank goodness. That would be hard to take, frankly, because most of the "cool" kids at his school have an element of jerkiness. But to me, he is a pretty cool 14 year old to have around. He plays electric bass and is teaching himself electric guitar. He, with his cousin, and then with his friends, did a couple of "gigs" at which they have played cool rock songs. He sang and played bass or guitar. He sings really well. Says he gets nervous but then just goes up there and does the thing perfectly. I nearly split open with pride that he pulled off these things so well on a stage in front of a lot of people. Even though he still has his personal demons and doubts, he is so much braver than I ever was at that age. He has a girlfriend who was his friend for a long time first, but he still hangs out with other girls who are just friends, and his guy friends. At his age, I was too wrapped up in the girlfriend/boyfriend thing to the exclusion of more fun friend times. In many ways he seems much smarter about these things. He is somewhat wrapped up in the clothes and the hair and the shoes, but at least he's eclectic and sort of funky. He's kind. He's not overly judgemental, although we work on that sometimes. He's into doing art as well as sports. He will sometimes do crazy exploits with me. For instance, he insisted we enter a local chocolate baking contest for no good reason except that he thought it would be fun. We spent two days coming up with our own cookie recipe, making hundreds of them, and then we won first place in the contest, which was an absolute hoot. I wouldn't even have entered if he hadn't pushed me to. One time he made a pair of paper pants. Just wacky inspiration! I don't know, I just think he's cool. If I were 14, he's the kind of kid I would like to hang out with. This probably sounds like one more blathering parent going on about her exceptional kid. So sue me. I was just thinking about him and about how I really like the kid. And, realistically, there may come a day when I need to remember this by referring back to this post. Given the careening moods of teenagers, that day could be tomorrow.