One of my chief responsibilities these days is chauffeuring our suddenly busy 15-year-old

At some point during their high school years, many kids find themselves–for the first time ever–in need of a calendar to keep track of their schedule.

One day you're spending hours playing Minecraft or hanging out with your friends or whatever, and the next you have this long list of responsibilities and commitments.

My son Jack has reached that point this school year. The combination of COVID and unemployment means that I'm often the one to ensure he gets every place he needs to go. (For years with the other kids this responsibility fell on Terry, so I'm fine carting the boy around town.)

This spring, for example, a typical day for Jack looks like this:

7:55AM: I take him to school.

8:00AM-2:18PM: He's in school.

2:18PM: He gets picked up from school and brought home.

2:30PM: He's back at school for track practice (yes, it would probably be easier for him to just take his track stuff to school and change there, but we live very close, so...he gets a quick trip home)

3:30PM: I pick him up from track practice and take him back home.

3:45PM: He changes into his Chick-Fil-A uniform and I drive him to work.

7:00PM: I pick him up from Chick-Fil-A and take him home.

7:15PM: He's back home, where he immediately throws his work clothes into the washer, goes upstairs, and either chills out for the first time that day if he can, or he does homework.

NEXT DAY: Repeat.

All of us have gone through this process at some point in our lives. It's not that big a deal in the long run, but it is something to which you have to learn to adjust.

Until Jack turns 16 next winter and gets his own car, his mom and dad will be the ones making sure he gets from place to place.

Considering he's the baby of the family, I think I can live with that for another nine months.

The youngest child gets his first real job

My 15-year-old son Jack recently began working at the local Chick-Fil-A. It's a good first job for someone his age for all of the reasons you would expect: You build a work ethic, you learn to do the job even when you don't feel like it, you gain experience working with people (for better or worse), and of course you develop a much better appreciation for the value of money.

There's also this: When that first job is in fast food, you learn one of life's most painful lessons, which is that you really never want to know how the sausage is made.

This lesson applies to more than just fast food, of course, though I learned it literally when I worked at Wendy's in the mid-80s and vowed never to eat their chili again when I saw that the meat for it was just burgers that had been sitting on the grill too long (I have admittedly broken that vow several times since.)

More broadly, though, you learn that the actual process by which the goods and services we purchase daily are made is often surprisingly messy, painful, and in the case of food, disgusting.

Anyway, I say this is Jack's first "real" job, but it's not his first time earning money. For the last few years, he has earned $25 a week cutting grass for our neighbors Joe and Lisa. Over time they have afforded this opportunity to earn a modest summer income to four of our kids, I believe, and we're all grateful for it. They're great neighbors.

Still, this is the first time Jack has had to work within a place of business, learn skills he didn't previously have, and be accountable for every minute of his time during work hours. It's all part of growing up, but I'm a little torn by the fact that it's happening.

On one hand, it's obviously a positive thing. Anything that helps prepare your child to navigate the world of work is a helpful experience in my book.

Conversely, it's little Jack (little in the chronological sense...the boy is, after all, pushing 6-foot-2). He's the baby of the family, and as is always the case when he hits a certain milestone, it's the last time we'll go through that process as parents. To use a 19th-century word, it makes me feel a little melancholy.

But I'm still not going to abandon those Chick-Fil-A grilled chicken sandwiches, no matter what he tells me about how they're made.