Delight Springs

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Keeping in touch

When Older Daughter was still toddling I introduced her to the big rollerball computer mouse, the one designed for tiny undexterous hands, and set her up with a bunch of CD-ROMSs like JumpStart Toddler, Freddy Fish, & Little Critter. That's probably why she says I'm the guy who made her the way she is today, and that a lot of people have a bone to pick with me over that. But I think she's turned out pretty well.

One of her first CDs was "Get Ready for School, Charlie Brown!"

Why am I thinking about that this morning? Well, because yesterday was her first day of college. I've already been mildly upbraided for texting at inopportune moments, over-monitoring her status as I suppose a parent's expected to do. We didn't have to deal with texts or emails or skypes or facetimes or facebooks or tweets or whatever,  from our parents. Mine barely called or wrote at all day-to-day in '75, as I recall... though Mom did come racing up the highway with her nurses' kit early in my freshman year, when I complained on the phone of an upset stomach.

And Dad was a fairly frequent visitor too, come to think of it. He liked to drop in on Wednesdays, his day off, with tools. (I was living in an old house off-campus, he was honing his landlord fix-it skills.)

Well, Older Daughter, don't worry. You're twice as far from home as I was, I won't be turning up on your doorstep unannounced. But, when's Parents' Weekend again? (Just kidding. I know exactly when it is. Better get started tidying that dorm.)

I will however be thinking of you, and dropping the random "Forever"-franked postcard in the mail. Like the one in my pocket...
THUR, AUG 22, 5:30 AM. This is quiter & less obtrusive, & more fun, than a text. No? Went to the Nashville chapter alumni event at Bosco's last night, met some nice parents of other frosh like yourself... & a young woman, class of '08, who lived in the dorm room across from yours. An English major, then (without premeditation) a law student at Ole Miss, then hired to work in D.C. Had said she'd be done with Tennessee, when she got her degree. Her friend & classmate made roughly the same circuit, via Chicago. And here they (happily) are. So, as the old Cards' pitcher Joacquin Andujar once said (employing his "favorite English word"): Youneverknow. 
Sure is quiet over on the other side of that wall behind me. Hope your 1st day was great. Love, Dad
I also hope she'll save these postcards, I have enough to get us through four years and a nice collectors' box to return 'em to, in what only feels like the far future of 2017.

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