Jeff sat there reeling from what happened. He was caught off guard, never anticipating his dad would just forfeit his addictions onto his son, but in fairness, he didn't know it would actually happen.
Quickly concluding this just is just a slight delay in him getting back to normal, he took the deep drag he had been craving this morning and all yesterday, and exhaled heavily. "You up for a game?" Jeff knew the memory of the prior challenge was removed from his father's memories. "Sure" came his father's light hearted reply.
Jeff dealt the Uno cards and engaged in light conversation, trying to find a way to work stipulations in. "So, any big plans next week?"
"No... Maybe a report due Friday? I'll have to double check." Mike took his cards and began organizing his hand.
Jeff flipped the top card and waited for his dad to play. "What kind of report?" Jeff asked expecting some nonsensical corporate jargon.
Mike played as he answered, "Mr. Whamp's Science class. Something about insects in environments. I think I got wasps. I'll have to do more research today and can type it up over the week... or two weeks if I have the due date wrong."
Jeff's heart skipped a beat. That was his assignment. Quickly searching his own memories, thoughts of school were harder to access and thinking of his friends brought forward the guys from Friday nights and some of dad's coworkers he had never met, but trying to think of classmates came up blank. The specific details of how to do the job, however, weren't there. The split between biological and legal age was causing a paradox, leaving he and his dad's lives in chaotic disarray. Jeff knew many jobs require employees to be 18 or 21, so his dad couldn't be employed there when he was legally 16, but Jeff could, sorta...
Jeff took the rights of a middle aged man, not the memories or experience. His father had been through high school and college so he could get through a few high school classes again, but Jeff hadn't been a corporate employee before. "Ugh." Jeff felt like he had been punched in the gut but apparently it sounded like a grunt of acknowledgement.
"I'll have to present. It's so awkward looking like this but being legally 16 and having to go through high school again."
Jeff played a card passing the turn back. "So you wish you were legally an adult? Could do all the adult things?"
Mike pulled a card and played it. "No, most of that stuff doesn't interest me so I'm in no hurry to rush the next two years... I just wish my biological age was closer to my legal age."
Jeff realized he had specifically taken any desire to drink and smoke from his father along with everything else... Adulthood held very little allure because outside of voting and... sex? What does this mean for his parent's marriage? "But if I could make your legal age match your biological age, would you accept? You wouldn't have to go to school and it wouldn't be weird for you to have friends your biological age anymore. You wouldn't feel so out of place."
"I actually wish I could just... like... hand out my chronological age a year at a time until I looked... like 18. All the guys in my classes are obsessed with looking older and I'm over here looking like I could be their dad."
"Dad, you are the father of a teenager, though." Jeff said taking a final drag and stamping his cigarette out in the ash tray that used to be his father's. Reality heaved as around 30 years melted away from Mike, leaving him with the appearance of a strapping young man, and presumably 15-30 people around the world now looked a year or two older or some mixture thereof.
Jeff's stress skyrocketed but he couldn't react since he was the only one who actually knew what was going on. His new habits had him lighting up another cigarette for some form of relief and he was trying to not gawk at his teen father and figure out whether he should try to garner his father's adult knowledge so he could maintain employment while he tries to sort this out, or continue trying to pass adulthood back to his father which has only been making things worse each time he tried.