Flo Rida Gets to Be Middle Aged Too

What happens when flash-in-the-pan pop stars get old?

Every year since 2018, my son William and I have made a pilgrimage to Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri, just like my father, after whom he is named, and I have done every year since I had a stable enough life to pay for my own plane ticket home. This was something I imagined doing with my son before I ever had children, before I was ever married, and it’s a tradition I hope he continues with me when he’s an adult. But I’ll confess: I’m a little worried we’re going to have a bit of a break in the coming years. He’s a teenager now, with school about to start again, and all he wants to do is text and hang out with his friends; the dad who used to hold his hand as we crossed the street to walk up and touch the Arch, who high-fived him when Tommy Pham homered into the left-field bleachers, is now kinda lame, an uncool old guy whom he has to live with and tolerate, whose rules he has to still follow, but mostly is getting in his way and causing a seemingly endless string of eyerolls. This is fine, this is the process, this is how it works — I went through this stretch with my own father as well. I came back. He will too. But we are very much entering this stage. I wonder if next year or the year after there’s a trip with friends he’d rather take, and then there will be a girl, and then there will…