Nick is getting serious with Maya, and Paula and Sherri ask Gordon and Ted to give Nick "the talk." Nick tells them he already knows "everything." Exactly what entails "everything?"
Takes place sometime after Game Changers season 2; Ted is brought in to be a trainer for the new generation of Ducks sometime after they return from EPIC.
Based on a scene from Tim Allen's new show, Shifting Gears, which happens to feature Nick Ganz's actor Maxwell Simkins.
Kids These Days
Ted looked across the room at Gordon and knew his old friend was dreading this conversation. When Sherri and Paula approached them about their son, Nick, and Nick's dating life, Gordon and Ted knew what was coming. Nobody ever prepared him for this part of being recruited as the new Ducks' trainer.
Actually, maybe he was. He'd given Charlie this same talk during the kid's sophomore year when he got in trouble for having Linda drunkenly spend the night at his and his mother's apartment after a party.
But nobody told him that this responsibility would fall on his shoulders again.
He guessed that was the way the world worked; they were in the twenty-first century, where gay couples had kids of their own. The downside of that? If they had a child of the opposite sex from them, they didn't know how to have that sex talk with them.
At first, Ted brushed aside the concerns. Nick was thirteen. No way would he be thinking about sex yet.
But Paula said, "He's taking an interest in cologne, and we walked in on him and Maya making out in his room."
At least this time, Gordon wasn't throwing him under the bus like he did with Charlie. This time, Gordon would be right there with him.
Still, Ted knew throwing a couple of pamphlets at the kid wouldn't work. He'd done that with Charlie. And that did not go well. He still remembered how pissed Charlie had been that his two dads and his mom had been talking about him like that.
He wondered if Nick would have the same reaction.
He shuddered at the thought as the Ducks' alternate captain walked in, bearing his backpack, which they knew had his laptop, which he used to record his podcast, The Wraparound.
"Hey, Coach," Nick said, dropping his bag on the ground, "you said you wanted to talk about something?"
"Yeah," Gordon said. "Well, you see, you're thirteen, you're a teenager now, and I know you're very mature for your age. And your moms, well, they've been noticing your new habits, like your interest in cologne, you've been working out more frequently, and your moms mentioned to us . . ."
"Why are my moms talking to you?" asked Nick, quirking an eyebrow.
"They've just expressed that since you don't have a dad around, maybe somebody should give you that man-to-boy talk about girls, dating . . . sex," Ted said.
"Okay, let me stop you guys right there," Nick said. "If you mean the sex talk, I don't need it."
"What do you mean you don't need it?" Ted asked; that was a surprise. Surely, the boy needed to talk about this sort of thing with somebody, and not with his mothers, who were less than qualified to do so since they didn't know the first thing about what it was like to be a boy on the cusp of puberty just starting to date.
"Well, I've learned everything there is to know off the Internet," said Nick.
"Okay, I'm sure that you've learned a lot of things off the Internet," said Gordon.
"Everything," Nick repeated.
"Everything?" asked Ted, still not quite believing it.
"Ev-ery-thing," Nick emphasized. "Anyway, I gotta go get dressed for practice."
"Sure," Gordon said, nodding, but he still looked rather concerned as they watched Nick leave his office, unsure of what exactly he meant by everything. But it could not be good.
"What the hell is everything?" Alex Morrow demanded. After practice had finished for the evening, Ted and Gordon pulled Alex aside and told her about their predicament with Nick, about how he supposedly knew "everything" about sex and dating at just thirteen years old.
"I don't know," Gordon said, staring at Nick's open laptop. "But he says he reads stuff off the Internet. We need to get a look at what he's looking at."
"Yeah, I agree, and I'm sure Sherri and Paula would agree, too, but doesn't it feel wrong, you know, hacking into a kid's laptop? That stuff is personal!" Alex said.
"And how would you feel if Evan told you what Nick told us?" Ted asked, raising an eyebrow at Alex.
Alex bit her lower lip, considering for a moment before saying, "Okay, fine! Just give it here!"
"Wait, you know his password?" asked Ted.
"He's my son's best friend. And he uses the same password for everything," Alex said, logging into the computer and pulling up Nick's browser. "Okay, let's go to his search history. And maybe, his watchlist; Lord only knows what he watches in his free time."
Ted nodded in agreement; he was old enough to remember a time when the WB was popular among teenagers, and the Ducks would rush home every week to watch Dawson's Creek and 7th Heaven and all those other teen dramas. But at least those shows weren't so graphic with their depictions, and yes, they talked about sex, but they weren't inappropriate. Ted wouldn't lie; he'd admit that he watched those shows with Lucy from time to time.
"Okay, let's check out his Disney+ watchlist," said Alex. "Hmm, Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek, Glee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, oh, even that show Shadowhunters. Those are perfectly reasonable, not much to be concerned about."
"Yeah, perfectly normal teenage drama shows," sighed Gordon with great relief.
"It's Disney+. What do you think you'll find?" Alex asked.
"Yeah, good point," Ted said. "Okay. What else is there?"
Alex went through Nick's search history again and found a link to one website in particular. "Okay, what is Sci-FiHubX?" she asked, clicking on the link that would take her there. "It's fanfiction; a website that specializes in a combination of science fiction and romance or fantasy and romance; romantacy."
"Sounds like the sort of thing Maya reads in her free time," Gordon commented dryly. "The only time her nose is shoved in a book is if it's Twilight or those Immortal Instruments or whatever teenage girls read right now."
"Kids these days," Ted said, shaking his head. Kids these days wouldn't know real literature if it slapped them in the face. Everything was based off that fanfiction kids loved reading. He remembered the days when Lucy would privately go on to read stories about Hermione and Draco from Harry Potter.
"Oh, and Tumblr," said Alex, clicking on a link to a Tumblr fanfiction for something related to Power Rangers, which linked to a story on Archive of Our Own. "Okay, this here, it says it's a story for that 2017 remake of Power Rangers."
"Yeah, that story was done before. It was called The Breakfast Club," Gordon commented, rolling his eyes. "Let's see this. 'Zack Taylor has changed the name to Zack's Bitches . . . and Billy ;-). Boss Man: Dude! Stop changing the name. Hot Stuff: It wasn't even me, man.'" Gordon winced, and Ted thought that his old friend was about to get a migraine. "Okay, this . . . this is unacceptable. Charlie would say that; he's an English teacher. And what the hell is F/F?"
"It stands for female/female," Alex said. "That means this story contains two girls having sex. Or . . . they're shipped for a sexual relationship."
"How do you know that?" Gordon demanded, his face turning red. Ted wouldn't lie. His own face felt hot.
"I won't lie. FanFiction is my guilty pleasure," Alex said, blushing all the way to her hairline. "What else? Hmm, X-Men Supreme: Scott and Jean in the Backseat. What's this?" She clicked on it and scrolled down until it got to . . . "'Of course they have, damn it! That doesn't mean they had to do it over the goddamn sink! Keep in mind, this is after Bobby accidentally CC'd me those pictures of himself to Jubilee…pictures that I can't unsee.' 'How bad were they?' Scott instinctively asked, already dreading the answer. 'Let me put it this way…I'll never be able to look at an ice cream sundae the same way again.' These were some distressing, yet colorful recollections. Apparently, spending several days away from the mansion meant missing out on a few awkward moments that Jean just couldn't avoid for some reason. Being a powerful telepath, it was extra frustrating. It started off with a few lurid stories about Logan and Ms. Munroe's significant efforts in make-up sex . . .' Okay. I know where this is going!" She clicked out of the browser, her face heating up even more.
"Okay, that's kind of weird," winced Ted, rubbing at the space between his eyes. This was positively, utterly disgusting and not at all what he expected they'd see. What were kids reading nowadays? And where did they find this stuff? He was suddenly grateful he'd coached the Ducks. Back in the 90s, none of this existed.
"No, this is nuts," Gordon said. "Remember the good old days when Charlie was a boy, and the only thing we had to worry about was him sneaking copies of Playboy? He told me one story of how he and his friends read bikini copies of Sports Illustrated for free because they couldn't afford to buy anything! They said one of the models in that edition was Guy's mom 'cause she was from Minnesota!"
"Heck, yes, I remember! I found copies of Penthouse in Dean's hockey locker at one point!" Ted said. "He'd sneak that stuff into his dorm all the time. Along with a few of those movies. And they were into stuff like All That, which had references to the 'money shot.'"
"Well, at least it's less misogynistic than some of the other things out there. And far less inappropriate than those old Nickelodeon shows," Alex said. "But should we tell Sherri and Paula? Should they be worried that this is the sort of thing their son is into?"
"Yes, they should be worried," Gordon stressed. "There's a lot of dangerous weirdos online who are into unrealistic kinds of porn, and now their son is one of them!"
Alex sighed hard. This responsibility had to fall on her because her son was Nick's best friend, therefore, as the mom of Evan, she had to inform Paula and Sherri about what their son was into. At least she didn't have to worry about Evan getting into that. A sudden horrible thought seemed to cross her mind. "Oh, God! You don't think Evan's into this stuff, right?"
"I doubt it," said Gordon.
"Really? Because we live in a time where everyone says Velma is a lesbian," Alex pointed out. "Either that, or they ship her with Shaggy."
"Hey, at least Scooby-Doo is drug innuendo," pointed out Ted.
"And that's comforting, why?" Alex demanded.
"Hey, at least your son isn't into romantacy," Gordon said, rolling his eyes hard as he sat down on his couch, shaking his head. "Somebody's gotta tell him that that stuff is not real."
"Well, at least some of those fanfictions get something right. They talk about the importance of foreplay." Alex looked like she was cross between disgusted and relieved.
"Let's hope he and Maya don't go that far," Ted shuddered. "Like I said, kids these days."
Stories referenced are A day at the (theme) park by Spideys_Stories and X-men Supreme: Scott and Jean In The Backseat by MarvelMaster616