Yesterday I wrote about my elder son getting his first college-acceptance letter. He’s growing up and this post documents one of the more surprising examples.

One workday a few months ago, I woke up to find my son ironing a dress shirt. Then he asked for help in knotting in his tie. This event  has repeated itself  on a weekly basis since then. Pretty shocking for a boy whose wardrobe from age seven consisted mainly of baggy jeans and t-shirts.

So what’s going on? The dress-up order came from my son’s high school basketball coach. Whenever the team visits another school for a basketball game, the players need to wear dress pants, shirt and tie.  An interesting idea, similar to what happened in the NBA some years back.

I’m certainly not complaining, even when it meant shopping with him shortly after Chrsitmas and buying him a some ties, dress shirts and dress pants. There are some surprises about parenthood that no one tells you about.

Have you noticed a similar transformation in your high school student? 

I don’t remember the last time I saw my oldest son cry. I didn’t actually see him cry yesterday when his high school basketball team lost by two points.

After the small crowd had gone home and only the two teams and the score keepers remained, I looked across the court to see my son’s face buried in his hands. Then he pulled his jersey over his face as several of his team mates attempted to console him.

It had been a tough loss. His team had fought back after trailing by at least 13 points only to lose by by two. It hadn’t been his best game. He still hadn’t recovered from a torn rotator cuff suffered at the start of the season. He had scored and rebounded some, but it was his hustle yesterday that I really admired  - playing defense, wrestling for the ball while sprawled on the court, and  late in the game getting an opponents’ foul shot nullified when a player on the other team had stepped over the line too soon during a foul shot.

But with one second on the clock and his team down by two points, my son, who is 17,  was on the foul line to shoot two. If he hit both,  his team just might win its first game of the season.

The first shot bounced off the rim. So did the second.

I could guess how he felt. His teamates had named him team captain after he had led them last year in scoring, rebounding and foul shooting. But this day the shots did not go. He had let his team down and he had let himself down.

I walked across the court to him and rubbed his back and head. I told him it was OK, and that he had played a good tough game, but I don’t think he was buying it. Only after the coach had called him a second time for the post-game meeting did the jersey come down from his face.

Later I tried to figure out what I would say to him. I felt badly for him. The loss and his missed shots hurt. What could I say? But I had another feeling that I couldn’t quite place. Finally I knew what it was and what I would say – I was proud of him.

We talked after dinner last night, just the two of us, and it was the closest I had been to this stubbornly independent boy in a while. Maybe we did manage a win of sorts yesterday.

Here’s another hot weather story. Amid air pollution alerts and soaring afternnoon temperatures Monday afternoon, my 17-year-old son set off on his bike for a 5-mile ride to play basketball. And not hoops with friends, but a competitive full-court game.

He must have gotten heat exhaustion because he wound up vomiting at the end of the game and laid down alongside the court to recover. He later told me that he felt like closing his eyes, but was afraid that if he did so he would wake up in a hospital.

Of course I only pieced together this story, with some details coming from my wife, near midnight – after watching “The Bronx is Burning” (see my previous entry). Like many kids, my son gives out information on a “what-a-teen-thinks-a-parent-needs-to-know basis. So he slept through dinner after telling me only that he had felt sick while playing basketball and now wanted to rest.

Not that I would have been especially alarmed. He seemed to have gotten enough water to drink since the episode. I suspect the combinations of bad air and heat, biking and basketball andd perhaps not enough water caused his problem.

It’s not like I never did anythig like that. I celebrated my last day of undergraduate school on a mid-August afternoon playing tennis on a day when the temperature hit 102 F. Must have been dry heat. I guess all we can do is provide a little guidance and hope our kids will survive to adulthood when, with any luck, they may learn to come out of the mid-day sun.

This week, my sons are in a daily basketball camp, which is good in many ways: They’re both in the same place; they have to wear a uniform shirt every day (no last-minute wardrobe changes in the morning!); and the camp serves lunch. There’s also no swimming, so I don’t have a load of towels and swimsuits to wash.

But come next week, they’ll return to their regular day camps, where the biggest problem for me is that there is no lunch. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if my boys liked homemade lunch, but they are pretty boring when it comes to sandwiches. They limit themselves to turkey bologna, salami or turkey. They don’t like standbys like PB&J or cheese or tuna.  (No, they’re not allergic, just picky!) They don’t like condiments. And forget those ideas of giving them pita and hummus or anything “fancy.”

Last week, my 13-year-old didn’t make his sandwich (this is his job) the night before and a few minutes before the bus came, he was throwing Rice Krispie treats and applesauce into his lunchbag for a snack. When I asked him about his sandwich, he said he didn’t have time to make it. As a veteran sandwich-maker, I started to hustle into the kitchen to make him something, because after all, he was going to be out in the sun all day and he would be hungry and what if he passes out and the nurse calls me and it will be all because he didn’t have a sandwich?

My husband, bless his heart, stopped me and said, “Don’t make him anything. I used to do the same thing, when I was his age. And I’m still here, right?” His reasoning was that if my son was hungry that day, he would remember to make his own lunch the night before, as we’ve asked him to do.

I’m not sure yet whether playing hardball has worked; my son hasn’t had to make his lunch again yet. But he did mention that he was a little hungry that day. And he apologized for not doing what we asked him to do. So maybe it worked?

Tell me some of the ways you play tough with your kids. And if anyone has any lunch ideas for my finicky sons, I’m open to them.

Sometimes fatherhood can seem like a series of humiliating experiences. Over the weekend I played one-on-one basketball with my eldest son at a family barbecue. It was not an even match. He’s 17 and I’m 55. He was the high scorer and top rebounder on his high school team as a junior this year. I hit half my shots into the waste paper basket next to my desk. And at 6’1â€? he’s got four inches on me.

Our game started when I attempted to hit from the outside because that’s easier than trying to drive around him. I shot and missed. He got the rebound, passed the ball to himself through my legs and then scored. It went on like that for about 20 minutes until I was saved by the burgers coming off the grill.

A colleague of mine here said that surely, I must have had mixed emotions over the game: personal humiliation but also pride in my son. Actually my feelings came down to personal humiliation and fatigue. I’m proud of my son’s athleticism when he’s beating someone his own age.

I probably should be happy that he still wants to play with me. When I asked why he wants to engage in these one-sided contests he made it sound like it was an accomplishment for him to defeat me. “You’re my dad, I’m not supposed to be able to beat you.�

And they say parents sometimes have unrealistic expectations for their children.