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“The doctor said I’m really skinny,” my son says. “I’m in the 75th percentile for weight but I’m in the 94th percentile for height.”

“That’s not a really big difference,” I say.

“She said I could be 6-foot-4 by the time I’m 20.”

“I’d like to be 6-foot-4.”

“I wouldn’t,” he says. “I’m going to stand out everywhere.”

“I’m 6 feet, maybe a little over, and I’m taller than most people, but if I was 6-foot-4, I’d be definitively taller than most people.”

“Exactly,” he says. “I’ll be a freak.”

“6-foot-4 isn’t a freak. Girls love tall guys.”

“I’ll be an outcast giant.”

My son can’t find his cell phone . . .

“You should glue it to your hand,” I say, “since you lose it at least once a day.”

“No, I don’t,” he says.

“Once a week, then.”

“Okay, but I never lose it. I just can’t find it at the time I need it.”

“Mom, can you drop me off at the park for basketball?”

“Not now, honey, I’m on a business call.”

“People are waiting for me! YOU’RE KILLING MY TEAM!”

I say to my ex: “How can you ask if he’s your kid? You can count backward from his birth to one of the two times in six years we had sex.”

— Penelope Trunk

Northwood High School grades came out today. My son got A’s in all of his classes. He won’t know that himself until Saturday night because he’s currently incommunicado at Children of the Corn camp, but the honors classes at Northwood are anything but a slam-dunk A, even for the best students, so we’re very proud of him.

He’s become a lot better at managing his time and plotting out academic strategies, down to the level of selecting the right background music for study sessions. He’s still not as proactive with his teachers as I’d like him to be, but behavioral modification takes time. You can offer ideas, but until an idea and the kid’s readiness for the idea converge, nothing happens. Years may go by.

For example, he just recently started setting up more study groups with his friends, a mere four years after I first mentioned to him that study groups were a big help to me when I was in school.

I’m considered the parent in charge of academics at our house. I used to spend quite a bit of time with the boy up through junior high school but now that he’s in 10th grade, I don’t really do much. Or actually, I do the same thing I’ve always done, which is to say, ‘Let me know if you need any help with that,” the difference being that he rarely asks for help anymore.

My wife has never been totally on board with my approach. “You can’t just say, ‘Let me know if you need any help,’” she says. “You have to help him.”

I say, “You’ve probably already noticed this yourself, but if a person doesn’t want your help, you’re not going to be successful in helping him, no matter how smart or wonderful you are.”

“Blah blah blah,” she says.

I’m scoring this semester’s report card as a triumph for my pedagogical method.

My son’s at a church camp in San Jose for the next week. He doesn’t actually go to the church, but friends of his do, and he’s been to this camp with them before and liked it.

He left yesterday morning, which was Fathers Day. That’s the first thing I don’t like about this camp, that they take the kids on Fathers Day.

The next thing I don’t like is that they collect the kids’ cell phones when they arrive, so they can’t call home except in cases of emergency.

“I thought churches were supposed to teach kids to honor their parents,” I say to my wife. She’s not sympathetic to this line of inquiry. She thinks all churchgoers are good people although I’ve never been able to see the correlation. “They’re probably up there right now telling the boy his dad is going to hell . . .”

My son’s been out of school for two days now . . .

“Summer’s going by so fast,” he moans.

“Is that supposed to be funny?” I ask him.

“It’s almost July already,” he says.

Today was the last day of school here in Irvine . . .

“Can I get a ride to Orchard Park?” my son asks. He has friends that he meets there to play basketball.

“Did you check with Mom?” I ask.

“I don’t have to check with Mom,” he says. “I’m out of school now.”

“So you don’t have to check with Mom?”

“No. Not any more.”

After he checks with his mom, I drive him over to the park. Actually, he drives to the park and I ride along.

As we’re approaching a red light at Jeffrey and Trabuco, he says, “I’ll stop the car so you can’t even feel it.”

This is something I showed him how to do. I’m pretty good at it, but he goes through so many slow-motion false stops and starts that by the time he’s done, the car is almost entirely in the crosswalk.

“We’re in the middle of the intersection,” I point out to him.

“I did it though,” he says.

As we drive past the Arco station, I notice that gas prices are up over $3.00 again for a gallon of regular.

“Obama needs to stop playing basketball and deal with these gas prices,” the boy says.

“You’re right.”

Tomorrow’s the last day of school here in Irvine. I walk by my son’s room . . . he’s studying for his last finals and listening to bebop piano music, which is not on his normal playlist.

“What you listening to, Mr. Noodling Jazz Musician?” I ask.

“Thelonious Monk,” he says.

“Is that part of an assignment?” I know he’s been studying the Harlem Renaissance in English.

“No, it just helps me study.”

He’s in 10th grade now . . . he continues to improve his study habits and time management so I pretty much let him do things the way he wants to.

“OK. Let me know if you need anything.”

By this time tomorrow, my little boy will be halfway done with high school . . .

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• Not every child is secretly a genius: http://bit.ly/Ksk8O #

It was like a ghost town yesterday. The Lakers were playing a close-out game. It’s Finals Week at the local high schools. Everyone young and old had something to do.

My own 10th-grade boy spent 12 hours Saturday studying at the Barnes and Noble cafe at the Marketplace, followed by an Extreme English Breakdown session yesterday at Starbucks on Culver . . .

Good luck, students!

I gotta get some gas. I pull off the freeway — Shell or Chevron? They’re right next to each other. I check the price for regular — $2.93 either way.

It’s a tossup.

Then my son notices on a sign that the Shell gasoline is “nitrogen enriched.”

“Nitrogen enriched!?” I say. “Are you kidding me?! Fuck Chevron . . . what is nitrogen, anyway?”

“It’s an element.”

“Yeah I know, but who can tell me why it’s a good idea to put it in gasoline? What are we, chemistry professors?”

“It seeks out and destroys engine gunk.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“I read it on the sign.”

“Oh . . . OK, we’re going Shell.”

It’s kind of sad. The orthodontist has been almost like a member of the family the last few years and I’m going to miss him . . .

I’ve got the dog all hooked up for a walk but I don’t have shoes on . . .

Look! Right here by the front door are my son’s prized possession — his red sneakers!

He notices me slipping my feet into them and says, “Hey! What size are your feet? You’re not going to stretch them out, are you?”

“Actually,” I say, “they feel a little loose.”

“OK,” he says grudgingly. “Don’t step in any puddles.”

We’re driving home from the hockey rink in Corona . . . my son’s playing solitaire on his iPod. As we’re pulling off the freeway in Irvine, he says, “I just won my first game the entire trip.”

I say, “When I play it on the computer, I lose most of the time, but once in a while I’ll get like a three-game winning streak.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“It’s like women in that respect. The overall goal is to make you feel bad about yourself, but they throw in just enough positive reinforcement to keep you from giving up completely.”

My son and I walk into Trader Joe’s . . . there’s a big sign that says “KIDS! Find the hidden dragon and win a prize!”

“I’m going to find the dragon,” the boy announces. “I bet it’s at the free sample stand.”

Not surprisingly, it’s not at the free sample stand, but while we’re there we’re able to drown our sorrows with some free baked bean and hot dog samples . . .

My son’s learning to drive . . . pulling out of a parking lot, he turns right and clips the curb a little bit.

I ask him, “Did you look left to make sure no one was coming?”

“I saw no one was coming.”

“How did you see that if you didn’t look?”

“I saw it in my peripheral vision.”

“Did you see that curb in your peripheral vision?”

• Automaker bankruptcies: A success of the market system – http://bit.ly/1BgH7 #
• At Wingnuts w/Casey. For wings. #
• At Corona rink for AAU Nationals #

I’m at Target shopping for a new watch. My son is with me. He’s 15 years old.

“Bah,” he says, sizing up the display. “Where’s the platinum stuff?”

“Look,” I say, “all I need here is an inexpensive watch that’ll tell me what time it is.”

A guy behind us chortles. He knows what I’m talking about; he’s browsing through a rack of $19 Ray-Ban knockoffs.

“Buy what you want then,” the boy says. “But my watch is very attractive to the ladies.”

“What kind of watch do you have?” He’s not wearing one so I have to ask.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he says. “It starts with an ‘R.’”

“Very funny. What kind of watch do you have?”

“OK, it’s a Casio. But it’s got a really cool band.”

I’m driving my son to hockey practice . . . at Barranca and Culver, an Asian kid is holding a sign with an arrow and something written in Chinese. Or Korean maybe.

“Wow,” I say, “that is racist. I’m being totally excluded from the activity, whatever it is. If he had a sign saying ‘No Whites Allowed,’ it couldn’t be any more racist.”

“Maybe that’s what it says,” my son suggests.

“Good point.”