The thousand-yard stare. My dad taught me the meaning of that phrase when I was a boy. He was a former Marine in the Korean War, so he knew a thing or two about the thousand-yard stare. Simply put, the phrase was coined to describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary warrior. The stare is a characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder.
A few weeks ago while watching our local high school baseball team play its rival, I noticed a version of the thousand-yard stare. I’d call it the 100-yard stare, and it was in the eyes of practically every parent in attendance.
You see, despite being a parent for more than a decade now, I don’t know a thing about parenting. No offense, mind you. I get that you feel like you’ve earned your stripes. You’ve cleaned up the messes, cared for them when they were sick, built up their self-esteem when an easy grounder went through their legs and even started having that oh-so-delicate conversation about the birds, bees and Kardashians.
Go tell all that to a parent of a high school, college or post-graduate child, and they’ll laugh in your face. I love talking to these parents. They’re really the only ones I gain any tangible information from.
Parents like me can tell you all about figuring out the politics of select baseball leagues or which teacher you want to steer clear from in third grade (she’s the one who’s going for her master’s in Facebook during class time). But parents like me have no clue what it’s like to hand the keys of the family SUV to your 16-year-old son. We haven’t the foggiest what it feels like to stay up late worrying when they’re at a post-game party at a friend’s house. Or how to deal with a major break-up of the boy who your daughter knew was Mr. Right. Or understand what it’s like to hear your little bundle of joy tell you they hate you for no tangible reason other than the rage of evil hormones.
Yeah, I don’t get it yet. Haven’t a clue. I’m a private first class waiting for the day when I’ll have the 100-yard stare. I admit, I do enjoy telling new parents about the trials and errors that they’re about to go through. I live to download to parents of fifth-grade girls that they’re in for a whole new world when their daughter starts junior high. Yeah, I’m a real expert. An expert moron. But at least I admit it.
From what I gather from the real experts, parenting of a teen-plus is like a tsunami. At first, you really don’t think much of it when you notice the ocean has suddenly rushed away from shore, leaving everything high and dry. Then, when you see the waves coming in, you start to slowly backpedal. As it finally dawns on you that the waves are taller than Dirk Nowitzki standing on the shoulders of Shawn Bradley, you do your best to sprint toward safety, only to be smashed to the ground like a rag doll. I imagine parenting a teen will be something along these lines.
Back to the high school ball game. It’s the final inning, and I’ve been eyeballing a dad in the row in front of us. He’s been cheering, but not in an Earl Woods type of way. Then his boy comes up with the winning run on third with two outs. He promptly blasts a fastball to right field to win the game.
After the screaming subsides, I congratulate the dad and tell him he must be thrilled. He turns to me and says simply, “Yeah, that was fun. I’ll be happier if he comes home right after the game. He’s taking the ACT tomorrow morning, which will tell us if he can get into UT or not.”
The thousand-yard stare. The phrase originated in war, but it’s a symptom of severe psychological distress that can occur anywhere. Of course, I wouldn’t know myself. Not just yet anyway.
Rudy lives in Flower Mound, works in Fort Worth and plays everywhere in between. He has one wife, one daughter, one son, one published book, one obsession with sports and 20 million observations on marriage and children. Follow him on Twitter: Manifesto10.
