for pay raises or layoffs ... in slumps and stock splits ... till death do you part. You need an incentive? For better or for worse, you're married to a 'classic' sitting in the side yard with bucket seats and a name you can't pronounce. You're committed to it in sickness and in health for as long as you can afford gas, insurance, license fees, and tune-ups. You have responsibilities now. You have a car to support! Get a job!”
Our son listened carefully and headed for the guest room.
For a first-generation speech, I had to admit it was pretty good. Usually, our lectures were Golden Oldies handed down from our parents, which their parents had laid on them. But this was a new speech for a new generation living in new times. No one had to tell our generation how to find the American Dream. The molds were in place when we got there. We married early, had babies, wore practical polyester, paid cash, fertilized grass, washed our own cars, and waited for the Christmas savings check. We accepted twenty-year house payments, forty-year marriages, and thirty years on the same job without question.
It wasn't until we had children that we discovered no one wanted to emulate us or our life-style. No one wanted to inherit the fruits of our labor. No one wanted to profit from our experiences.
They had their own timetable.
Our generation brought with us the curse of memory. We remembered when jobs were nonexistent and there was only one way out of a world of sleeping in your underwear and buying coal fifty cents at a time ... an education!
I don't think we could ever forget the feeling of pride of watching our first college graduate weave down the aisle.
He looked like a Supreme Court judge who had just shot a few baskets and had forgotten to change his shoes.
I snapped a picture, even though he had threatened to self-destruct if I did it. I looked. He was still there looking at me like he had eaten something that didn't agree with him.
His father and I had disagreed on his choice of university. I thought the campus had a nice “feeling” to it—much like The Paper Chase on PBS. I never lost my naivete. When my son didn't write home, I knew it was because he dropped a bible on his foot and couldn't hobble to the post office to mail his letter.
When he intercepted his grades before we could open them, I knew in my heart he wanted to have them framed and given to me for Mother's Day.
As I told his father, I know he postdated a check for $100 so he could buy a jacket to go with his tie for the one evening a week they dressed for dinner at the dorm.
Even when we phoned him at the dorm and a voice shouted, “Suds! It's your Mom!” there was no doubt in my mind I had dialed the wrong number.
My husband took one look at the curtains flapping outside the dormitory windows, a three-story monument to beer cans near the chapel, and a goat tethered in the student lounge, and said, “You are wrong. It'sAni'maf House.”
Had it only been four years since he sat at our dining room table and worked out his curriculum? At first I thought the subjects were frivolous, until our son explained there was a movement underfoot to make college students more literate.
“What will they think of next?” I smiled.
“The general consensus,” he added, “is that advanced education has swung too far toward specialized studies and needs to get back to courses that prepare students for life.”
I couldn't agree more.
He had done well in “Remedial Bicycle Watching” (three hours) designed for the novice who has had three bicycles ripped off in five years. “Bring chains, locks, small explosives, and detonator. Bicycles will be furnished.”
“Is There Life After Lunch?” was enlightening (three hours). “A seminar with guest lecturers who outline advantages of staying awake to participate in cleaning room, soaking laundry, doing required reading, and, in the final quarter, adding a class or two.”
He barely squeaked through “Your Car
Our son listened carefully and headed for the guest room.
For a first-generation speech, I had to admit it was pretty good. Usually, our lectures were Golden Oldies handed down from our parents, which their parents had laid on them. But this was a new speech for a new generation living in new times. No one had to tell our generation how to find the American Dream. The molds were in place when we got there. We married early, had babies, wore practical polyester, paid cash, fertilized grass, washed our own cars, and waited for the Christmas savings check. We accepted twenty-year house payments, forty-year marriages, and thirty years on the same job without question.
It wasn't until we had children that we discovered no one wanted to emulate us or our life-style. No one wanted to inherit the fruits of our labor. No one wanted to profit from our experiences.
They had their own timetable.
Our generation brought with us the curse of memory. We remembered when jobs were nonexistent and there was only one way out of a world of sleeping in your underwear and buying coal fifty cents at a time ... an education!
I don't think we could ever forget the feeling of pride of watching our first college graduate weave down the aisle.
He looked like a Supreme Court judge who had just shot a few baskets and had forgotten to change his shoes.
I snapped a picture, even though he had threatened to self-destruct if I did it. I looked. He was still there looking at me like he had eaten something that didn't agree with him.
His father and I had disagreed on his choice of university. I thought the campus had a nice “feeling” to it—much like The Paper Chase on PBS. I never lost my naivete. When my son didn't write home, I knew it was because he dropped a bible on his foot and couldn't hobble to the post office to mail his letter.
When he intercepted his grades before we could open them, I knew in my heart he wanted to have them framed and given to me for Mother's Day.
As I told his father, I know he postdated a check for $100 so he could buy a jacket to go with his tie for the one evening a week they dressed for dinner at the dorm.
Even when we phoned him at the dorm and a voice shouted, “Suds! It's your Mom!” there was no doubt in my mind I had dialed the wrong number.
My husband took one look at the curtains flapping outside the dormitory windows, a three-story monument to beer cans near the chapel, and a goat tethered in the student lounge, and said, “You are wrong. It'sAni'maf House.”
Had it only been four years since he sat at our dining room table and worked out his curriculum? At first I thought the subjects were frivolous, until our son explained there was a movement underfoot to make college students more literate.
“What will they think of next?” I smiled.
“The general consensus,” he added, “is that advanced education has swung too far toward specialized studies and needs to get back to courses that prepare students for life.”
I couldn't agree more.
He had done well in “Remedial Bicycle Watching” (three hours) designed for the novice who has had three bicycles ripped off in five years. “Bring chains, locks, small explosives, and detonator. Bicycles will be furnished.”
“Is There Life After Lunch?” was enlightening (three hours). “A seminar with guest lecturers who outline advantages of staying awake to participate in cleaning room, soaking laundry, doing required reading, and, in the final quarter, adding a class or two.”
He barely squeaked through “Your Car
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