Chick Magnet Jr.--Day One

Being hippies, we pretty much let our kids run their own life while we tye-dye our underwear and grow pot in the kitchen and so when the Roon up and said he didn't want to go to school at the Catholic School he'd been attending since kindergarten, we roused ourselves from our purple haze and said, "Cool, man, do your own thing!"

However, we were prepared for him to attend the nearby public school where our genius daughter went. In fact, he'd planned for a whole year to go there and I was overjoyed because he can ride his bike to that school and it meant I could laze out until the screen door slammed and the Hey Dad bird started in on the daily questioning. Now I have to fire up the gyro copter and fly over a golf course to get him.

But it's worth it for two reasons:

• He looks so damn handsome in the much more formal uniform of the new school which employs a white oxford button down shirt, a blue tie, and a dark blue sweater-vest. Kid looks vegas. I mean, it's Catholic Vegas, so no gambling or hookers, but still. Vegas.
• Chicks dig him.

This came as a real surprise to me. I mean, ok, not a total surprise. He'd always had a couple of girls that clearly liked him but it's always been in the "Dad, she's a girl who is my FRIEND not a GIRLfriend, JEEZ!" end of the scale. I mean, he never thought about it.

Well, that's apparently changed. The uniforms for boys and girls at the original Catholic school were the same for boys and girls: dark blue polo, dark blue pants. At the new Catholic school, the boys are all prep and the girls are in a YELLOW sweater vest, a green and crimson plaid skirt, and a matching cravat. Or something like a cravat. It's cravaty. Apparently this minor change in the uniform makes a difference. Maybe it's the different colors--now he can actually tell which ones are girls from a distance. I'm not sure he's consciously noticing girls, but things are moving in that direction. Ie:

He went to the store the other day and got some new clothes which he picked out himself. He spent a lot of time doing this and ended up with the kind of acid streaked jeans, t-shirt and matching over-shirt ensemble you'd normally expect in a GQ ad. He looked hip. Cool. Well put together. And he knew it too. He borrowed my nappy horrible old "G" cap and checked the crook in the mirror for 5 minutes before we took off for sign-ups.

As we're walking out of sign-ups, two yellow-sweater clad girls are talking. As Connor walks past, one of them blurts out to Connor--"Oh my god, WHAT GRADE ARE YOU IN?"

Now I happen to speak 5th grade. (took it in College) and I know what that means. That's 11 for "God, you're hot!" And it means Connor has been noticed, not merely by one girl but, as they share a hive mind, he's been noticed by ALL girls.

As we rounded the lot to go home, the girls never took their eyes off him.

Connor Garlington--Chick Magnet.