So if I ever needed proof that I’m getting older, it would be those pictures on the right. Go ahead and look. You can even click over to Tumblr for a bit to check them out in their embiggenated form. I’ll wait.

So what you’re witnessing there are a few shots from Patrick’s first school dance. And at that, his first school dance with a girlfriend. And just to top that off, his first semi-formal school dance with a girlfriend.

Being the first such affair for him, we–and by we, I largely mean Jenni, with assists from me–acted as consultants to him to make sure he had everything in place. You know, like semi-formal attire. And the tickets. And a corsage.

But it does just reinforce the fact that the kid is sixteen years old, starting to sort of, hesitantly, in fits-and-starts, tentatively, move on to an independent life of his own. Oh, I know: it’s yet another of the many milestones of his–and our–life. Someday, not too terribly far away, he will move out to be on his own and establish his own life in the world. And it all begins, or continues, with a simple high school dance.

I know he doesn’t see it as the milestone it may be, however minor. Lord knows that I don’t think I see any of my high school dances as milestones either. But they are. Complete with pictures to tell the story to some future generation who will look back with disinterested eyes. But it fits into the larger allegory that is his life: junior year, the first girlfriend, inheriting his first car…little things like that…

Ah, but sometime perhaps, years from now, he can look back at that picture and that smile and remember what it was all like.

See you tomorrow.