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I find myself ill-equipped to support a teenager going through their cool-tough-popular-rebellious phase, because I was never any of those things.

My narrow, gaunt face did not allow me to be cool. My skeletal frame and inability to develop any muscle mass prevented me from being tough. Professing a love of reggae and hip hop could never change any of that.

Having hardly any friends at all, and those I did having a tendency to drop me suddenly without explanation, there was no prospect of popularity. I’d always be the last to be picked for a team. The dregs at the bottom of the barrel. Billy No-Mates.

And whether because I was extremely timid or had very strict parents, or a combination of both, there was no prospect of me ever seriously stepping out of line. I was the very epitome of a good obedient boy, doing as I was told.

The only real commonality between father and son is in finding school work extremely trying. Only, in my case, it wasn’t because I was messing around or playing class jester. As a classmate observed when another student once asked if I was a square: “No, he’s right thick.”

I had the unenviable role of looking like a nerd, but having none of the intellectual ability. Or so it seemed back then. But I may simply have been dealing with an intense lethargy caused by deficits in my body. Or I may have been doing the wrong subjects. Or my brain may work differently. Who knows?

Eventually I pulled myself together and managed to graduate from a Masters degree. Perhaps with encouragement, our lad will follow suit and go on to achieve great things. We can but pray. As for the rest, though?

“There is nothing you can teach me,” he recently spat back at me, when I tried to explain the etiquette of ladies before gentlemen after he hurtled through a doorway pushing his sister aside.

Sometimes I think he may be right. I occupy a completely different world, raised in an ethos far away from the chauvinisms of the new-fangled alpha male so popular amongst today’s young men.

We were raised in a world of good manners, politeness, putting others first, being helpful, giving charity, being kind. In my upbringing, morals were immovable. You knew what the boundaries were, even if you flirted with atheism or agnosticism. Ethics were non-negotiable.

But, of course, perhaps that was just me, so timid and shy. Billy No-Mates. Geek kid. The proverbial weirdo. Loner. Weakling. Could it be true? With no experience, there’s nothing I could teach anyone at all?