"Growing Pains" by Cole Parker

[Camy]

Chapter 14...

Noooooooooooooooooo!

[Rutabaga]

Luckily I have a good supply of Kleenex . . . .

R

[Camy]

'hmmmmm' indeed.

Lovely story, well concluded. Thank you, Cole.

[Rutabaga]

So we leave Trip . . .

 

. . . with the task of choosing Jason . . .

 

. . . or James . . .

 

. . . or maybe someone else. 

I agree with Tanner that Trip is unlikely to backslide into a depressed hermit after all that has happened.  Especially with his newspaper column, he has opened up and won't lose all that he has gained.  It's sad that Tanner will be gone but the experience was good for both of them.  Indeed, it is fair to say that Trip and his family had as much of an impact on Tanner -- leading him out of a bad setting and into a new relationship with his father -- as Tanner had impact on Trip.  They both emerged stronger and more "alive."

In a strange way this story reminded me of the 2012 film, "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," where a childless couple suddenly has a youngster appear in their lives and bring about many positive changes -- and then disappear again.  Tanner functions in a similar way. 

The one overarching question I was left with was this:  What, exactly, was it that led Mr. Montgomery to assign Trip and Tanner as teammates for the world history project?  He said he had specific reasons, but I wonder what they were, especially in Tanner's case?

R  

 

 

 

[Merkin]

Thank you for "Growing Pains", Cole.  There's a lot of wisdom in this final chapter.

[Cole Parker]

Thanks so much, guys!  I was concerned when I wrote this that stepping outside the box might not be accepted.  So many of these stories are boy meets boy, boys like each other, they solve some problems and then walk off into the sunset; the end.   Writing a story where boy meets boy, boys like each other, then walk away from each other, well, I could see lot of complaints coming for that.  A great letdown being the consensus opinion.  But not you guys!  I'm very pleased to see I got away with it. 

I ended up liking this one quite a bit.  So glad I wasn't alone.   

C

 

 

[Rutabaga]

My complaint is that the story ended too soon . . .

R

[Cole Parker]

I already had at least one request for a sequel.  Not going to happen, I think.

C

[Camy]

21 hours ago, Cole Parker said:

I already had at least one request for a sequel.  Not going to happen, I think.

C

What might be fun, rather than a sequel, is an epistolary.

 

[Rutabaga]

I ran across this story in an old open browser tab on my iPad, so had to go back and re-read it.  Just as good the second time.

R

 

P.S. - Hopefully it will be linked on Cole's story page one of these days.

[Camy]

16 hours ago, Rutabaga said:

I ran across this story in an old open browser tab on my iPad

Huh? 🤔

 

[Rutabaga]

33 minutes ago, Camy said:

Huh? 🤔

[Camy]

Umm... yes, an iPad. Suhweet!

What confused was the 'old browser tab' bit. How can you have such old tabs still available? Do you never re-boot or update, or...?

[Rutabaga]

1 hour ago, Camy said:

What confused was the 'old browser tab' bit. How can you have such old tabs still available? Do you never re-boot or update, or...?

They just persist through restarts, etc.  I have to go through and do housecleaning every once in a while, which is exactly how I ran across this open tab from last fall.  It doesn't seem to bother anything to have a number of tabs open at once -- I think the device swaps out the memory used by the tabs to make it available to other things when those particular tabs are not in the foreground.  But nothing makes the open tabs go away except clicking on the almost imperceptible tiny "X" in the corner.

R 

 

[Camy]

Wow! Way cool. Is this an ipad thing, a browser thing, or a bookmarks thing? Whatever it is I wish I had it... maybe it's in settings (I use Firefox).  That it persists after restarts makes me think it's somehow bookmark related. Hmm... 🤔

[Rutabaga]

4 hours ago, Camy said:

Wow! Way cool. Is this an ipad thing, a browser thing, or a bookmarks thing? Whatever it is I wish I had it... maybe it's in settings (I use Firefox).

If you click on the little horizontal lines in the upper right corner of Firefox, you drop down a menu that includes an item called "Settings."  Click it.  Then under "General/Startup" there is a box you can check to "Open previous windows and tabs."  

R

[Camy]

3 hours ago, Rutabaga said:

If you click on the little horizontal lines in the upper right corner of Firefox, you drop down a menu that includes an item called "Settings."  Click it.  Then under "General/Startup" there is a box you can check to "Open previous windows and tabs."  

R

Thanks!