"See you Sunday."

This is what we say to Anthony when he leaves the house. It doesn't matter if the day is Monday or Saturday; this is what is said. The source of this is tied to a single weekend from his sophomore year where Anthony left the house on Saturday morning with no real plans in hand, and we didn't see him again until Sunday evening.

He did a number of things with those thirty-six hours but mostly bounced from one group of people to the next. It is my sense that Anthony has a phone tree of sorts that he steps through when an event ends, and he doesn't have a next thing scheduled. I'd say eight times out of ten, he will land upon a gathering of some sort before he gets to the end of his call list. It is worth noting, to me, who is in bed with lights out by 10:30, that it doesn't matter if he is ringing people at 1pm or 1am. On the minority occasions, he doesn't find a gathering, he will come home and hang with us or do homework.

The 36-hour run is only memorable in that it got some special attention. When it happened, it came up in front of the parents of a friend of Anthony's. The friend was the first-born, and Anthony the last/third-born. Of course, the friend's family could not fathom letting their sixteen-year-old child run loose, whereabouts mostly unknown, for 36 hours. Marty and I could read the abject judgment on their faces when they took this information in before us. I wish I could say this was the last time these parents would wear that expression or hold those thoughts about us, but it was not. If I took an honest accounting, their alarms were triggered a surprising number of times by our parenting. All this means is there is a set of parents out there who may have had a conversation about if reporting Marty and me to DFS was something they should do for Anthony's well-being. While this may seem an alarming development to some, Marta and I viewed it as an opportunity to check the "reported-to-DFS" box on our parenting bingo card.

I can admit if we were talking about a sixteen-year-old Bella, I imagine Marty and I would have handled letting her disappear similarly differently. Truthfully, I don't know how much of it is gender-driven, how much is birth-order driven, and how much is Anthony-driven. It's probably a pretty even mixture of all. But as Marty often cites, life is not about getting what others have but about getting what is right for you.

Actually, I just had another thought that might tip the scales to the Anthony-part of the equation. Anthony recently visited a friend. While there he suggested inviting another mutual friend over. His friend said she couldn't do that because she was grounded. Suprised, Anthony asked if he was allowed to be there if she was grounded. She said, he was ok. In fact, he was the only friend she was allowed to see. Even as her parents were yelling at her, saying she was grounded and couldn't see any of her friends, they paused the tirade to add "except for Tony". When Anthony shared this story with me, I wanted to ask him if he knew why he was the only one she could see. Before starting to ask, I noticed the shirt he was wearing. The front of it loudly proclaimed--Only Positive People. This saved me from asking my question and provided, I believe, ample enough insight to why our Tony might have earned this special distinction.

Lastly, do not think Anthony's freedom comes penalty-free. His payment or punishment is he has to endure my endless flow of questions about everything he did while he was away. He will be the first to tell you that when it comes to his father, no detail is too minor or mundane. I'm fascinated by it all. It is possible that he may stop going out and just sit in his room so he doesn't have to recount every moment of his life to his father. Though you'd be surprised at what I could get out of someone who just sat in their closed-door bedroom for six hours, so I fear he wouldn't be safe even locked away there.