Hi, this is Frank Flaherty. Welcome to Park Slope, Brooklyn, for this week’s episode of “Dad, Interrupted.”
Today, I’d like to explore ambition. Not personal ambition, like losing 20 pounds, or learning to play the harmonica. I’m talking about parental ambition, your hopes and dreams for your kids.
We want our children to be healthy and successful. We want happiness and triumph to follow them all the days of their lives. And who would argue with that? Who would quarrel with the idea that parents should be fierce, unflagging, champions and promoters of their children?
Well, I would. Not quarrel, but quibble. Some parents are so darn proud of their kids that they go beyond championing them to crowing about them. Every parent is guilty of this, definitely including me. So it needs to be said that there’s a bright line between modest bragging, which all parents are entitled to, and gloating, which is not cool.
Why is it not cool? It’s not cool because our kids are not medals to pin on our chests or vessels to further our own unfulfilled personal ambitions. I know why we do this. Because we love our kids, and because kids are our bid for immortality. Still, it’s not cool, so put a brake on the bragging, people.
Overambition for our kids really spikes at college acceptance time, especially in a strivers’ neighborhood like Park Slope. That’s what this week’s episode is about. The crowing parents and their Ivy League kids are fictional, but the behavior is all too real.
I call this episode, “Yale Happens.”
The lights flicked on and the final notes from the violin ebbed away. It was intermission at The Hutch, a tiny backyard music venue in Brownstone Brooklyn.
Jeanette and I had hied ourselves here an hour earlier. We had had the realization that we often have on Sunday nights: “Whoa, we’ve watched Netflix and eaten Veggie Straws all weekend. We have to do something respectable right now, before the weekend’s over, because this couch-potato behavior is not who we are.”
We say this even though it is exactly who we are.
So now we were at this local concert, sipping white wine and chatting amiably with some of the 30 or so other attendees.
Shortly after the intermission began, I spotted a longtime neighbor, let’s call him Marty. It was dim, but Marty had a half-athletic, half-slouchy stance that I knew well. I also knew that as soon as he saw me he would zip right over, deftly slaloming around the clusters of people to get to me.
But there was no way I was gonna let that happen. I knew the reason Marty would zoom right over to see me. It was April — college-acceptance time — and Marty’s son had gotten into Yale. Jeanette had told me this, but because I went to Harvard Marty was drooling to deliver this Ivy League news to me personally.
To avoid him, I scooted past the huddle of musicians and ducked behind a tall guy, burying my face in the music program. A few tense, furtive moments later, the lights flicked on and off, the intermission was over, and Jeanette and I retook our seats. Then, when the concert ended, I hustled us out the door before Marty could accost us.
Now, I’m very glad for Marty and his son. It’s not easy to get into Yale. But there’s such a thing as a parent being too glad, and Marty was too glad, if you know what I mean.
Several years earlier, there was another local kid, named Brian. He got into Princeton and excelled there, he played hockey masterfully, he was swooned over by the Park Slope girls, and he was a real sweetheart to boot. Everybody loved Brian.
But his parents? His parents were deadly. Can you work the word “Princeton” into a conversation about compost? Brian’s parents could. Can you twist a discussion about the flu into one about Brian’s SAT score? Brian’s parents could do that, too.
As a neighbor once said about Brian’s mother, “She already thought her son was Jesus. Then he got into Princeton.”
But then Brian stalled out. His Ivy diploma sat moldering in the drawer in his childhood bedroom, which is where he returned after college and remained for a very long time. Until, that is, he went to India to find himself. I hear he’s still looking.
Of course, we all wish Brian well. We don’t exactly wish his parents well, though. When the neighborhood learned the news about Brian, we all exulted. Not at Brian’s turnabout, but at his parents’ twist of fate: “They have reaped what they have sown!” we said. “Their bulldog competitiveness had nipped them right in the Ivy League diploma!”
In living rooms everywhere, from Prospect Park to the Gowanus Canal, from Farrell’s Bar to Flatbush Avenue, a loud, long “Yessss!” arose.
In the wake of the news about Brian, Park Slope seemed to be on rewind. Instead of Brian’s parents pursuing us to brag about Brian’s latest triumph, we were pursuing Brian’s parents, eager to watch them fidget when we asked about Brian’s life detour.
“What?” we neighbors would say in fake surprise. “Brian’s in India? What’s he doing there? You’re not sure? We had no idea! We assumed he was at Yale Medical School, like you told us. I guess we’re behind on the news!”
Of course we weren’t behind on the news. They just wanted to gloat, and watch Brian’s parents twist in the wind. Schadenfreude is a bitch.
About a month after our narrow escape from Marty at the concert, he finally cornered me. I was leaving the Key Food grocery with some Bustelo Coffee, a carton of overpriced, still-on-the-vine tomatoes, and a packet of Pocky chocolate sticks, to which we are addicted.
“Did you hear?” Marty asked. Marty always assumes you know what he’s talking about.
“What?” I asked.
“We got into Yale!”
“That’s great!” I said. “Your son will have a great time. Did you know that Dick Cavett went to Yale? I always liked that guy.”
“And he got a huge scholarship!”
“Scholarship? Excellent!” I said. “He must have really impressed the admissions committee. You should go to some Harvard-Yale football games with him. They’re a lot of fun. The Harvard and Yale kids razz each other all game long.”
“Oh?” Marty said. “What do they say?”
”One time the Harvard Band unfurled a banner that said, ‘Yale Happens.’ That cracked me up.”
Marty stared at me blankly.
“And once the Harvard kids chanted “Safety School, Safety School” at the Yale kids. “It went on for like five minutes.”
Maybe this was piling on, but then, to broaden Marty’s notion of what success means for our kids, , I told him a story about our son, Patrick.
Like many millennials raised in Park Slope, Patrick was a dedicated teenage pot smoker. And Prospect Park, which conveniently sits on the eastern border of the Slope, was their pot-smoking venue of choice.
Of course, the cops and the park rangers would routinely roust and chase the drinking/pot-smoking kids, and occasionally they’d catch someone. Plenty of Park Slope parents remember those phone calls. “Ma’am, I’m Officer So-and-So. I’m here with your son/daughter at Prospect Park, and …”
“But you know what?” I said to Marty, shifting my grocery bags. “Unlike many of his friends, Patrick has never been caught. And it didn’t matter how they were chasing him: Cops on foot, cops on scooters, cops on horseback, cops on motorcycles, cops in squad cars.”
‘I outran them all, Pops,’ he told me.”
I smiled at Marty. “That’s my boy.”
“Oh, and incidentally,” I said as I walked away, “Pat’s pot dealer goes to Yale. Nice kid. Maybe your son’ll meet him in New Haven.”
Yale Happens