I was driving my son to the movies, which is one of my main jobs. He would have preferred this wasn’t necessary, but Zach is 14.

I told him I was psyched to see the same movie he was going to.

He looked at me.

“Dad. I’m meeting girls.”

“I know. So?”

He rolled his eyes and reset the car radio from my classic rock station to hip-hop.

“Zach,” I said, “it’s not like I’d sit with you. I know that.” I had no problem finding a seat in a remote corner.

A second time, I got the look, the one teenagers give parents who don’t have a clue. I get that a lot.

“Dad, seriously.”

“What?”

“I’m meeting girls.”

First of all, what’s with this new thing about 14-year-olds taking girls, plural, to the movies? I don’t remember such dates. Not that they even call them that anymore. Whenever I ask Zach if it’s a date, he says it’s not like that.

“So what is it?”

“We’re chilling,” he explains.

Oh.

We parked and got out. The movie started in 20 minutes. I said we should walk right to the theater.

He nixed that. You don’t want to get there too early, he said. It looks bad.

Instead, we started walking past nearby stores.

I took off a yellow windbreaker I’d been wearing and began to tie it around my waist. That got me the look again.

“You’re not really going to do that,” he asked, “are you?”

“Why not?”

He explained that no kid wants to be seen with a father who has a jacket around his waist. It’s uncool.

He told me again I was not allowed to be in the same theater as him. No matter where I sat. It would be too embarrassing.

I was going to argue my case, but then I remembered, years ago, another dad telling me of driving his teen daughter to the mall. The daughter said she didn’t want to be seen with him. He agreed to keep his distance and meet her when she was done. No, she felt the risk of running into him with her friends was too great. She told him he had to stay in the parked car. And he did.

My own kids were little then. They still cried when their mother and I went out. I knew it wouldn’t stay like that, but I also knew they would never be telling me to get lost. I wasn’t that kind of father. But here I was.

I agreed to see a different movie.

Glancing at my watch, I said it was time to get tickets. He asked for some money.

“It’s okay,” I said, “I’ll buy them.”

“Dad,” he said.

In this case, “Dad” meant, “Let me handle it; there are girls involved.”

Teenagers have a way of putting a lot of meaning into one or two syllables. My older son, who just turned 17, had a shorthand way of correcting me whenever I said something embarrassing, such as, “Hey Alex, I see your whole posse’s here.” He would reprimand me with the same kind of two-word phrase used to scold a bad dog:

“Dad, no.”

Zach stopped walking. He said it wasn’t enough for me to go to a different theater. I had to wait where I was for 10 minutes while he went ahead and met the girls. Only then could I arrive and go to my own movie.

I peeled off a twenty.

“Thanks, Dad,” he said, and walked ahead.

“But…”

“See you, Dad.”

Parents have different jobs at different stages. For years, it’s to be with them as much as you can, because it’s what they need. But too soon, what they need is for you to not be with them. That may be the hardest job.

I stood still and let him walk ahead.

After a few seconds, near the theater entrance, he glanced back for a beat.

And gave me an actual smile.

And then he was gone.

mpatinkin@projo.com