That Time I Sent My 12-Year-Old Into The Gas Station Alone
It was mid-July, the kind of hot where the asphalt softens around your tires and your sweat dries salty on your upper lip before you even stop moving. Our minivan’s AC had died 40 minutes outside of Grand Rapids, and Jax, my oldest, was moaning from the passenger seat that his throat was closing up, that he was definitely going to die of dehydration before we made it to my sister’s lake house. My two-year-old, Lila, was passed out in her car seat in the back, her little cheek smushed against the window, covered in Goldfish cracker crumbs.
When we pulled into the gas station, I sat there for a full minute, engine running, debating. My back was stuck to the vinyl seat, my shirt was soaked through, and the thought of unbuckling Lila, carrying her hot and grumpy into that sticky store just to grab two drinks made me want to cry a little. Jax saw the look on my face and perked right up. “I’ll go. I’m twelve. Let me go alone.”
I hesitated. Fished my credit card out of my wallet, wiped the crumbs off it onto my jeans, told him exactly what to get: one large lemonade for him, one regular Diet Coke for me, no cherry, remember I hate cherry. Don’t lose the card. I didn’t say don’t talk to strangers, that sounds stupid even in my head. I just said “stay near the counter, don’t wander off for too long.” He rolled his eyes, grabbed the card, and hopped out, his too-big Minecraft hoodie swinging around his hips. He’d been wearing that thing every day for three months, even when it’s 95 degrees out. Preteens are weird like that.
I leaned against the open driver’s door, squinting into the glass storefront to watch him. The guy parked next to me in a beat-up Ford F-150 was wiping down his windshield, and he glanced over at me, nodded. I nodded back, but I could feel my face getting warm. Was he judging me? Was I being that mom that lets her kid run wild? Or was he thinking I was being lazy, making a kid do my work? I couldn’t tell, so I just kept staring at the door.
When I was his age, I was walking a mile to the public pool alone every Saturday in the summer. I was stopping at the corner gas station on the way back to buy myself a popsicle and a pack of gum for my mom. No one thought that was weird. No one called my mom negligent. A couple weeks before this, I saw a mom get ripped apart in our local parent Facebook group for letting her 11-year-old walk to the playground six blocks from her house alone. People were calling her reckless, saying anything could happen. I remember scrolling through the comments feeling all judgy too, like why would she take that risk? But standing there that day, it didn’t feel like a risk. It just felt like life.
I watched Jax stop on the way to the cooler to stare at a display of those new Minecraft energy drinks, the ones they advertise on his YouTube. He poked one with his finger, then turned and kept going. I exhaled. Then he stopped again to look at the giant beef jerky sticks by the register. Come on, Jax, I thought. We’re not here for beef jerky. Lila’s still asleep, let’s go.
Just then Lila snuffled and woke up, started crying because her sippy cup was empty. I half climbed into the back, one foot still on the pavement, fumbling around in the diaper bag for a new sippy cup, trying to keep one eye on the store the whole time. The guy from the truck finished wiping his windshield and said, over the roof, “Kid’s got it. They grow up faster than you think.” I laughed, all awkward, and said “Yeah, I know, I just… it’s weird, you know?” He just shrugged and got in his truck and left. I didn’t get to explain what I meant by weird.
Weird that 12 is such a no-man’s-land. He still forgets to put his underwear in the hamper half the time. He still asks me to lay with him when he has a bad dream after a scary movie. But he can also navigate his way through a whole Minecraft server, he can change the oil on his bike, he can order his own food at a restaurant without stuttering. I don’t know where the line is between “he’s still a kid” and “he needs to do stuff on his own.” No one gives you a map for that line. It just moves every day.
Jax came out five minutes later, holding the drinks, and a pack of sour watermelon candy he’d bought with his own allowance he’d been saving for week. I looked at the Diet Coke. It was cherry. Of course it was. He’d gotten distracted by the energy drinks again, forgot what I said. I sighed, and he got all defensive immediately, “It was the only one left! The cashier said they were out of regular, so I got cherry, it’s not that big a deal.” I didn’t argue. I was just so relieved to see him, that everything was fine. He told me the cashier lady had blue hair and was reading a cowboy romance behind the counter, and she asked him if he was out for a day at the lake, that was it. No weirdness, nothing. Just a kid buying a drink.
We’ve stopped at that same gas station twice since then. Both times Jax asked to go in alone. Both times I ended up going with him, once because Lila was awake and I wanted a snack anyway, once because I just… didn’t feel like letting him go. I don’t know if that makes me overprotective, or just normal. I don’t have a big, clean answer. I know that when I was his age I was doing way more stuff alone. I know that the odds of anything bad happening are so low, lower than the odds of us getting in a crash driving to the lake. But I still stand there, by the car door, and my chest gets tight, and I don’t know if it’s worth it just for a 10 minute break from getting out of the car.
I don’t know what I’d tell someone else who asked me if they should do it. I guess it just depends. If your toddler’s asleep, if your AC’s broken, if your kid’s been bugging you for months to let him prove he can do it, maybe you do it. Just don’t judge yourself if you stand there the whole time panicking, and don’t judge yourself if you say no next time even though he did fine. That’s just how it is, right? Raising kids is just a million tiny little decisions every day that you don’t have an answer for, until you just pick one and go.
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