By KEVIN POTTINGER

Our oldest boy turned 13 a couple of days ago. My wife Maria and I have heard that parenting teenagers can be pretty challenging.

This is our first teenager, so we’re braced for the worst.  I can report that so far, the first couple days have been OK.

At the supper table he slouched in a stiff wooden chair, ensconced in a pair of impenetrable full-size green headphones that twitched in time to burping-contest bass notes, like window-rattling hip-hop from some passing black-windowed dope-mobile. He could get one side of those headphones to work if he jiggled the wire just right; the other side was toast. I could clearly make out Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive” from across the table.

At my insistence, he slowly and sullenly removed the headphones, asking petulantly why he couldn’t listen to music at his own birthday party, tossing in a gesture of incredulousness at the injustice. We barged ahead with singing Happy Birthday, like a brave band of cheerful temperance workers in a pre-Prohibition saloon, bringing in the sheaves.

His youngest brother and sister blew out two candles that he missed, igniting a furious scrum and shouts of “Stooopp!” from all sides as they struggled around the Costco red velvet cake for a time. We clapped as he glared at his siblings through the smoke from the extinguished candles. Shards of white noise wafted from the green headphones vibrating toward the edge of the table, sounding like a dozen concrete blocks dragged slowly across blacktop.

His younger brother, growing into his birthright as his older brother’s wingman, announced to the table busy cramming forkfuls of red velvet cake into their mouths, that his older brother does not eat cake.

I insisted that he have at least one itsy tiny bite of his own birthday cake. He reluctantly swallowed a tiny shred of cake quickly with half a glass of water as if it were a gel-cap filled with boogers. After an exaggerated Quentin-Tarrantino-style slow-motion reaction shot of contorted grimacing, perhaps illustrating how even a small amount of cake affects Superman like Kryptonite, he tore into the pile of presents.

First up was a brightly-colored recycled birthday bag from our youngest daughter, filled with wads of tissue paper adorned with hearts rendered in strawberry-scented pencil with lots of notes and arrows and extra exclamation points. At the bottom of the bag he found a small picture frame in the shape of a basketball that he turned over and over in his hand as if it were a Golden Tablet of Mormon prophecy. He thanked his little sister in a croaking whisper, his eyes glistening.

His next present was a pair of Dancing Water speakers that shot arcs of colored water in enclosed clear-plastic towers based on rhythmic changes in the music, much like those color organs from the 70s that flashed different colored lights based on the content of the music. We plugged them into his iPod and watched them squirt blue and red and green arcs inside the plastic towers, a sort of colored-pee organ. In stereo. He pronounced them cool. It seemed as if his dark mood might be lifting, for return of a few moments of golden sun.

The last present was a pair of fancy headphones, the exact ones he asked for — the correct color, model and size, in an unwrapped box with a receipt from a big-box store taped to the top. He clawed impatiently at the packaging and fitted them together, hanging them on his ears and listening critically to the “Radioactive” song. He smiled radiantly and crowed, the new headphones still covering his ears, “THESE HEADPHONES SURE HAVE A LOT OF BASS.” His siblings clamored for a turn and fought for first in line to listen.

He let his mom try them first; Maria shares a love of electronic dance music with the kids. He turned the music down a little and gently placed them over her ears. After several seconds she pulled them off gingerly, pronouncing them awesome. Everyone had a turn; when it was his turn, his little brother smeared some ketchup on them, causing several minutes’ delay while our birthday boy carefully swabbed the ketchup off of the ear piece with the proscribed damp, lint-free cloth.

Lucky 13. As Imagine Dragons sings, “Welcome to the new age, to the new age, welcome to the new age, to the new age.” Becoming radioactive might be an interesting metaphor for growing into an adult. I’ll let you know if he starts glowing in the dark.

— Kevin Pottinger lives with his wife and four children on Vashon.