Sometimes Teenagers Are Better Than Llamas

Every once in a while you meet a teenager that reaffirms your faith in humanity...or at least your faith in the people that will one day be taking care of your broken down older self. You know, beyond the eye rolling, sigh heaving and monosyllabic conversationalism some teenager goes and does something supremely cool. Well, that just happened to me. And there were birds singing and furry woodland creatures dancing under a bright, shiny rainbow.

Here's the story. Jack recently started taking skating lessons during the home educators class that Ella attends. I've got Ella at one end of the rink with the advanced skaters and Jack at the other end with the beginners....whom I fondly (and only in my own goofy head) refer to as the skate, skate, splat class. I kinda look like I'm waiting to cross an imaginary street as I try to watch both classes at the same time. "Look left, right and left again." Or a spectator at a tennis match. Or a dog watching a metronome. Well, you get the idea...it's a neck workout for me.

So Jack started skating a few months ago and he's doing really well. In fact he just got his very own hockey skates. Now he wants to know when he's going to get his "hockey armor." Apparently I will also be adding hockey-mom to my resume sometime in the very near future. Anyway, they usually have a few teenage hockey players who help out with the classes. And one of these teenagers is Jack's new hero. Jack follows him around like a slightly wobbly puppy...on ice. And this kid always has time for Jack. Always says hi to him, he'll even spend his free skate time skating with Jack. Which is already grounds for total awesomeness in my book. (And to put this in context, Jack is 5).

But it gets even better. This past weekend we took the kids to see this awesome teenager's hockey game. Ella, who is surprisingly blood thirsty for a figure skater, had a blast and Jack kept jumping up and down and cheering...even if no one was playing. During a line change, Jack's hero took to the ice and guess what he did....he waved at Jack. Oh. My. Stars. You should have seen the smile on Jack's face. It was the best.

And then after the game, he invited Jack into the locker room. Granted Jack hid behind Major Dad's legs the whole time, but Jack got a fist bump from the big kids. The big kids! At least that's what I heard. Ella and I happened to be looking at sparkly skating dresses in the pro shop at the time. What? They had sparkles.

Stuff like that makes me so happy. The great kids, I mean, not the sparkly dresses. Sometimes teenagers are awesome. Sometimes you want to trade them in for llamas, but then they go and do something as cool as this and you forget why you were ever thinking about llamas in the first place.