In the words of Kid Rock, my son is now at the age of being “caught somewhere between a boy and man.” About 90 days shy of 15, he’s thinking about things big and small…all on his own. Formulating his own analyses of what he’s exposed to – mainly on TikTok.

He’s a member of Generation Alpha. News radio, newspapers, magazines, and the whatever-o’clock news are going out of business, my friends. Dying ducks. He’s in an algorithm now—perpetually being fed whatever the bots think will keep his fingers swiping.

Hit by the latest social media trend, he called me from school the other day.

“Dad, can you Venmo me ten bucks?”

I’m an ATM – but the PIN is that he has to tell me what the money’s for. That day, he planned to head out for food while his classmates walked out of school to protest ICE. I had to process that one pretty quickly. Actually, I think he was checking my temperature on the idea of walking out. Nothing says approval like an Alex Hamilton for a burger and nuggets at the Golden Arches when you’re supposed to be in class.

He told me his teachers were walking out, too. I broke that one down for him. They weren’t walking out – they were chaperoning. Walking off the job is a bad idea, I explained. I figured I’d save the Vietnam-era Supreme Court case on student protests for another day.

Quick shout-out to the full-time single parents out there.

I am a single dad. Full time. Nobody to call and say, Hey…Luca wants to walk out of school with the other kids to protest. What do we do? I honestly didn’t know what the “right” thing was. If the kid believes in something, it’s his to believe in. I don’t tell him what to think – I just hope to Christ he thinks, period.

It didn’t take long to realize he wasn’t asking permission. He was checking in on my thinking. I don’t take strong positions on things I can’t control, and he knows that.

I once knew a guy who made signs all the time. One for kindness. One for Pride Day. He even went to the Governor’s house with his signs because he wanted legalized heroin injection tents or something like that. Strong opinions. He once slept on a bridge to protect his signs after people kept throwing them into the water at night. He posted on social media, daring people to come fight him over them.

On Facebook, the guy is called The Clown of the Town.

“The lady doth protest too much,” Shakespeare wrote. People who protest all the time raise questions – not always about the issue, but about what’s going on upstairs.

So there I was, thinking about all of this while my 14-year-old contemplated protesting something rumbling across the nation – most notably in Minnesota. I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I did however, decline the ten bucks.

I told him this: if you walk out to protest, then you protest. No Door #3. No middle ground. You’re either protesting, or you aren’t.

I reminded him that the vocational high school he attends is selective. Not everyone gets in. About a dozen years ago, our towns spent roughly $150 million renovating it. I told him that, too. And I said, If it were me, I wouldn’t walk out on my multimillion-dollar school and a four-year education that will cost taxpayers about $100,000 per kid.

I told him it was up to him. I hoped he’d respect his school, his teachers, and his own education by being where he was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be there. But if he didn’t, he didn’t.

He told me he’d stay in school – not because of my opinion. He just couldn’t make up his mind about ICE. His classmates’ views conflicted with his algorithm, I think.

He was thinking.

He stayed in school.

Good news all around.

And that was that. No walkout. No burger. No ten-dollar Venmo transaction. Just a kid sitting in class, where nothing was really happening – half the students on the lawn, the other half watching them through the windows. Quietly realizing that not every moment requires a stance, a chant, or a sign written in Sharpie.

That’s the part no one really talks about – the space between belief and performance. Between caring and broadcasting. Between thinking and reacting. The algorithm doesn’t leave much room for that middle space. It rewards certainty. Outrage. Volume. It doesn’t reward pause. It doesn’t reward I’m not sure yet.

But real thinking lives there. So does maturity.

Our media does the same bullshit. Outrage, weather, obituaries, sports. Sometimes even outrage in the weather and in sports. Leave the obits out of it.

I didn’t feel like I won anything by him skipping the protest. Parenting isn’t about wins. It’s about moments where you don’t screw things up too badly. This felt like one of those.

I didn’t tell him what to think. I didn’t hand him a cause. I just reminded him that choices cost something – sometimes money, sometimes comfort, sometimes popularity, sometimes nothing more than the inconvenience of staying put.

He’s still caught between boy and man. Still scrolling. Still absorbing. Still forming opinions out of fragments, half-truths, and whatever the bots decide to feed him next.

But one afternoon, he chose restraint over reaction. Thought over theater. Class over chaos.

And that felt like progress. Not the kind that trends. But the kind that actually counts.

Caught Somewhere Between a Boy and Man

A Bull Named Fu Manchu