Ed just turned 17. He’s my brother’s son. Standing nearly six feet tall, he’s a husky kid, but not fat. His complexion is fair, his crew cut light. Somewhat shy, he tends to mumble and mostly gives one-word answers to anyone his senior. He often needs a shave, but he’s still at that age where flaxen facial hair is fluffy and fine, growing in wispy clumps rather than stubbly scrub. He lives in a small house in a South Shore suburb with his mom and stepfather — my brother and Ed’s mother divorced about 10 years ago, and ever since then, Ed and his younger sister have split time between their parents.

Ed’s a typical teenage boy. He cracks up at scatological jokes, laughs hysterically when his dad farts, watches Jackass religiously, and loves The Simpsons. When he laughs, he scrunches up his nose and snorts, but in an endearing way. He loves music, but is still too inexperienced with pop culture to realize that flash-in-the-pan bands like New Found Glory probably won’t be around in another six months. He reveres Eminem so intently that he twice bleached his sandy hair bottle-blond and saw 8 Mile on opening weekend. He’s a picky eater: on Christmas, his father buys him microwavable chicken patties so that he won’t have to suffer through the baked ham and broiled haddock his grandmother dishes up. He’s almost never left Massachusetts. He hasn’t been to the prom yet, but he did have a girlfriend named Kailie for a whole grade — eventually she kicked him to the curb for reasons he wouldn’t disclose.

He likes to play games. He’s obsessed with PlayStation and an expert at Grand Theft Auto III. Since the age of five, he’s been a maniac about professional wrestling. Two or three years ago, he and his friends built a full-scale ring in one of their back yards and staged elaborate matches until a crabby neighbor called the cops. Later, a community newspaper wrote a sympathetic story about their ’rasslin’ fiasco — it was the only time I can remember seeing his picture printed in a newspaper.

Ed never really enjoyed homework or school — neither did his dad — so in eighth grade he enrolled in a regional vocational high school where he could learn a trade. He recently told his mother that he wants to join the service after graduation. Apparently, recruiters came to his school, and he’s been thinking about it a lot, since it’s his junior year and all. It seems like an easy option. It’s hard to tell if he means it, but there’s a very big chance he does.

I hope he doesn’t.

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