It’s a phrase you don’t hear often. His chiefs of staff don’t say it. The terrified people of Guam don’t say it. You’re unlikely to catch any endangered species cooing it. But I’m gonna say it, and I’m gonna say it loud: Thank you, President Donald J. Trump! You’ve done me a solid, and I’ll bet you don’t even know it.
You see, my youngest son starts junior high this week. My baby. The child whose swaddling blanket still sits in his closet beside his hipster hoodies, and who until very recently still shuffled into his parents’ bedroom each morning to snuggle. I don’t mind telling you his transition to tweendom is every bit as brusque and grievous as you’d expect:
He spends time in front of the bathroom mirror, flipping his hair from side to side and making sneery tough-guy faces. He dismisses me curtly when his friends burst through the front door. He no longer wants to tag along to the supermarket. He no longer needs rides to school. It’s a moment every parent dreads, this abrupt, late-summer shift from sweet little kid to self-involved-big-kid-in-training.