I say, 'Take your midlife crisis now,' Cornelius Bull said he advises young people. Eighteen years ago, after a career as a headmaster and teacher, he founded the Center for Interim Programs, an organization in Cambridge, Mass., that connects teen-agers with internships in which they can do jobs like teaching English in Turkey or building homes in Canada. I am dead serious. Parents, he said, fuss too much over getting their children into college, and would be masochistic to send a child who says he or she just wants to have a good time. He told the story of parents who had warned their daughter that if she was on academic probation in June, she wouldn't go back in the fall.
Fathers are hopeless.
Well, it just doesn't happen. I think the kids just need surcease. Get out of their way, most of the time, and they'll be fine. You proceed by indirection. Our society thinks that's dalliance.