For me, this age range, I could literally write a book about Devin. From eleven on, there were so many things about him that I admired as I watched him grow from a child into a man.  There are so many stories I could tell, like the one night, he came up and woke me and my husband up. He had been out with some friends and was just walking home when the police had come up and because of his age and they knew his parents, they offered to give him a ride home. He thought it was so funny that they had offered to give him a ride home and like most teenagers, he thought he was the coolest person ever. He always laughed about being brought home that night in a police car.

During this time in his life, Devin did follow through with what he had said when he was a young child, the minute he turned 12, he went and got his first job at Wendy’s. He excelled at his job because he took it seriously, he loved working and he loved getting his own paycheque. The owners of Wendy’s absolutely adored Devin and considered him like a son. Even today, when I run into the owner’s daughter, we can sit and talk for hours about Devin’s Wendy’s days. The funniest story that I have heard yet was that they all got a free meal when they did a shift. Apparently, Devin came up with some interesting meal ideas and she would also tell me about how shocked they were by the amount of food that boy could put away.

When most kids would get paid, it was gone in no time, but for Devin, that was not the case. He was very conscious of his money and what he spent it on. If you went up to Devin’s bedroom, you could see as he pretty much had made his room into his own little apartment.

And when he started running out of space in his room, he decided one day to knock his closet out, and knock out the linen closet in the hallway and move his door to make his room bigger. Now in theory, that may have been a good idea. He grabbed a hammer and started the demolition and so when his dad got home from work, he almost had a heart attack. He seen the demolition had already taken place and Devin just needed his dads help to now put it together as a room again.

With the expanded space, though it was not a lot, he had his own loveseat set up in his room, microwave, mini fridge, water cooler and even a toaster. He literally had his own little apartment in there. We always teased him that he was the only twelve-year-old that had everything he needed to move into his first apartment.

Devin continued to always be so big for his age; he always was mistaken for being much older than he actually was because of his size and his maturity. No one would have ever guessed his real age unless they asked.

Devin continued to play hockey through this time in his life as well. I remember at the one tournament we were at in Saskatoon and there were some parents up in the stands complaining about our goalie and that he should have to show his age because obviously we had brought a goalie that was too old to be playing this tournament because of his size. I sat there and said nothing but as we all got up at the end of the game and started heading inside, those people ended up right in front of me and so I tapped the one lady on the shoulder. As she turned around, I explained to her that he was not the right age to be at this tournament, he was actually 2-3 years younger than all the other kids playing and that I would be more than happy to show her his actual age. She was totally shocked.

Devin also started playing football during this time in his life. He absolutely fell in love with the sport. He could not get enough. His dream was to become a professional football player. The coaches had him play on the line and that was right up Devin’s alley. Most of those kids were so much smaller than Devin and we used to joke that we would not want to be face to face with him. His tackles had to have hurt real bad for some of those kids.

At fourteen, as soon as he got his learners license, we went and bought him a moped. Devin was so excited. For him, it felt like he had just gotten his license. It gave him the freedom to not have to rely on others to get him places as that always really bothered him.

That first summer Devin put on over thirty thousand kilometers with that little red moped. Everyone seen him cruising around all the time. I remember many people bringing up this adult they had seen driving all over town with a red moped. I would wait until they finished and ask them all about this person. I would then start laughing and explain that it was not some grown man driving all over town but rather it was my fourteen-year-old son.

I heard so many stories from his friends about him and that moped. He earned the nickname scooter boy with that thing. I remember the one story his friend was telling me about Devin at the school doing a burnout with that little moped. He couldn’t sit on the seat as the moped didn’t have enough power then to do a burnout, but he figured out that if he stood, there was no weight on the back and so he could burn that tire off.

That first winter, when he had to park the moped because of snow, was the hardest winter for Devin. In that one summer, he had figured out how liberating it was to have the freedom to come and go as needed. That just fueled his desire to get his license and be able to have that freedom all the time.

He is the only fourteen-year-old I know that bought his first truck at that age. The first truck he ever bought was a dark grey short box chevy, he was so excited about that truck. It checked every box for him. It had the wide tires on it, the tinted windows and most of all, the stereo that was so loud it shook the whole truck. He didn’t quite have enough money on his own so that was the first loan he got from his mommy. He was so mad because he thought he should be able to go into the bank and get a loan himself. I had to explain to him that he could not legally get a loan from the bank until he was eighteen. Though he didn’t like that answer and really did not want to take money from his parents, he agreed to a mom loan. It was set up exactly like a regular loan but instead of paying the bank, he paid me. I thought it was so funny because most kids that age would have gladly taken money freely from their parents and been more than happy but that wasn’t Devin. He wanted so bad to be self sufficient his whole life.

Between the purchase of the truck and the moped, this allowed Devin the ability to take his love for anything motorized to a whole new level. That started it all and from there, vehicles were all he obsessed about.

Devin was still too young to drive his dream vehicle alone, but he always reminded us how it sucked that he had to have a parent with him. The one night when we got home, Eugene noticed that Devin’s truck was parked over a bit more and so we asked him if he had moved it. He said he had but just moved it over a bit. We started to really pay attention to where that truck was parked and after the second time of it randomly moved and us knowing he had taken it for a drive, we told him that one of the guys at the company Devin and Eugene worked at had seen him driving the truck. Well, he confessed that he had taken it out for a little spin. That started the challenge of disabling the truck so that he could not drive it. Fortunately, Devin was not as knowledgeable about mechanics yet at that age and so we were able to disable it and prevent him from being able to drive around.

That summer, we left the kids at home to go down south on a trip for a few days and so before we left, Eugene went and disabled Devin’s truck. We knew he would try and take it for a spin because he obsessed about that thing non-stop. And based on the conversations when we got home, we were lucky we had as he definitely had tried to take it out for a spin.

During this time of Devin’s life, he also started dating his first girlfriend. He was twelve at the time. It was so sweet to watch him start that phase of his life. He fell head over heels in love with his first girlfriend and though they were very young he dated her for like eight months or so. It showed very early on in his dating habits that he was not going to be a guy that jumped from girl to girl to girl.

As he got a bit older, he was interested in one girl in particular but she was a year younger than him and her dad did not want her dating. Devin ended up dating another girl for a bit and when they broke up, he then was able to date the girl he had been interested in. Little did he know, one day he would end up marrying her.