Back to NORMAL?

You know when my kid got back from her first year of college I really did not know what to expect. There is always that irrational fear that the people you really know in your lives, will suddenly just change on you – but never for the better. I am not as dense as my posts sometimes seem, so I knew of course that our daughter likely felt the exact same way. She secretly wonders “Yeah they USED to treat me ok … but now – who knows?”

To exacerbate the issue, on both ends of the relationship, the University provides a lot of data and cautions on how to handle this perceived widening gulf between parents and their college kids. The propaganda reads something akin to, ‘after their first taste of independence, all collegiates want to stay out all night and shun their ‘old fashioned’ folks and their stuffy ways’. Parents too, now free of their daily laundry duty and role as chief homework wardens, are suspect of their summer-returning children and their TRUE intentions. "She looks the same but NORMAL - I don't know?"

So I have been on the lookout for signs of unrest and distrust on both sides from the very first week back. Magically we all seem to have returned to our pre-college dispositions and expectations. There are differences now however. Our laundry methods are apparently not gentle enough so our daughter now PREFERS caring for her own clothes cleaning. I take no offense at her independence – in fact I have been doing the laundry badly for years in hopes someone would call me out on it and take over completely! Our kid’s next task back was not to conquer a dance club, but instead, a myriad of job and scholarship applications. No pushy adults required as it seems oddly, our kid has kind of transformed into one of those herself in nary a year?

So yeah, all those dire predictions of parental / college kid duress have not yet proven true. I still get a few reminders of my old role as clean-up batter once in awhile though. The kid is impossibly athletic so she uses some special Adidas super deodorant that she insists she needs. Isn’t that a personal care item I should not be involved with at all by college age? Anyway, she absent-mindedly has no idea where this stuff came from or where to buy it, so now it is MY problem. I run to four normal stores with no luck and finally ask a Pharmacist for help. All they have is some super clinical voodoo stick which has nearly of the same chemical composition as my daughter’s Adidas brand, but it is $9 for a couple of ounces? Hmmm, how long will she continue to buy this pricey 'stink stick' when she starts working all week for a meager paycheck? Further today, I received an anxious call that ‘baby spiders’ must have been in her purse and she somehow has inadvertently released them into my wife’s car while driving. Of course the kid has now abandoned the spider infested car in a parking lot while onlookers watch her twitch and squirm like a Tourettes cheerleader. Yep folks, I’m happy to report that there’s no unusual changes here – my kid's back from college and life is INDEED back to normal!