T w e n t y S i d e d

The year is 2018. Logan has graduated high-school and taking a gap year to work at his parents’ bookshop before going off to college. David applied for a job at the BookNook despite the fact they never actually advertised a job was available. They don’t have the funds or need for an employee, so they turn him down but invite him to still come hang out with Logan while he’s working.

The boys are disappointed. Logan reacts in a way that is still a little over-blown compared to someone a little older and wiser, but nothing unmanageable. He’s 18, and ‘the worst thing that’s ever happened to him’ remains a fairly mild list of things. His grandmother’s death was when he was too little to truly understand and be affected by it, and otherwise he’s got it pretty good. At one point in his mid-teens, he announced that something was the worst thing that ever happened to him. If you asked him now what it was, he wouldn’t even be able to tell you, and would be embarrassed he’d said it, but Logan saying it had made his parents beam with pride despite themselves. Not at him, necessarily, but the fact that something so minor was the worst. The phrase was a hormonal teenager having a moment of runaway emotions, but the win was there. Logan didn’t have anything worse to compare it to.

When Michael was a teenager, he had already dealt with a very scary immigration situation where it looked like his mom might get deported. When Kelly was a teenager, she’d lost a close friend to a drunk driver. Both of those things took years of processing to deal with, and they glow with pride to know that their son is okay. They haven’t sheltered him at all, they haven’t taken any precautions other than to work on their marriage constantly so they at least won’t be the problem, but Logan has gotten lucky, and they’re relieved.

A gap year turns into two. Logan runs the shop most days and David comes in and chatters to him. Michael can’t help but overhear their conversations when he’s in the kitchen and he’s worried about their contents. David lacks direction, and has a new ‘big plan’ every two days, and seems to pull Logan along with him. Kelly and Michael get increasingly worried about this. David has thought of everything from Bitcoin, to traveling the world by hitchhiking, to buying a bar. His plans are…not great, but so frequently changing that they’re watching their son get stuck. They sit Logan down and give him a little nudge to apply for college for the 2020 spring semester. Logan takes this idea as though he forgot college was an option, and runs off to go apply. The couple worry they’ve gone too far in the other direction from the parenting they grew up with and were trying to avoid, and somehow gave Logan a whole set of new problems they hadn’t thought of.

Their son seems to lack direction, if not motivation, and it worries them, until Logan returns with his college research. He has a notebook he’s written down pros and cons in for each college he was looking at. Some are far away, some not, but he’s circled the community college in the city. He explains that he wants to get an associate’s degree in psychology, and go on to get a social work major and psychology minor. He’s drawn out a little tree of options from there, including backup plans and ideas if certain things don’t work out. It turns out that he’d gotten stuck because he took his job at the BookNook seriously, and hadn’t wanted to leave his parents with the work alone.  He doesn’t just have a college plan, but a dream job circled afterwards.

He wants to work at the local community center as what he calls a ‘guidance counselor for adults’. He wants to help people with low incomes or bad situations find education and jobs right for them. “Felons have a really hard time getting jobs.” He explains. “David’s mom got help from there and if it wasn’t for them, he probably would have had to move in with his uncle and we never would have met.” He opens his notebook to another page, showing them notes of flowcharts. Each one takes a huge, not maybe very good idea, and leads it into a more practical plan using some of the elements from the original as starting points. Michael recognizes the original ideas as things David had been suggesting. “Is David helping you with this plan…?”  He asks, sharing a sheepish look with Kelly who had gotten the eavesdropped information second-hand.

Yup. David had been role-playing and coming up with ideas for Logan to re-frame and spin into actual careers. The reason they’d only been hearing David’s side was Logan was busy taking notes. Oops.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them