Cynicallous

A light, airy, effervescent, blog of grave consequence. (NOT!) Dedicated to those of us who must respond to negative stimuli by Chernobyling (entombing in concrete) our innermost thoughts.

Name:
Location: Slaughter, Louisiana, United States

A semi-gruntled corporate reliability engineer trying to make ends meet while keeping my wife happy, and myself out of the asylum.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Seeing Off A Daughter.

Peter Robinson of National Review had a few posts yesterday about his daughter leaving for college. I commented politely via Email and he used my note in "The Corner."

Here is the chain:

Seeing Off A Daughter [Peter Robinson]

This past week? The president addressed a joint session of Congress, the war in Afghanistan took an evil turn, throngs converged on Washington to protest the vast new expansion of the federal government, and yours truly missed it all, absorbed in an even bigger event: the departure of a child for college.

Every year it happens to tens of thousands of parents. This year, it happened to us.

Re: Seeing Off A Daughter [Peter Robinson]

From a reader:

I sent my daughter to Boston University. They sent back a Red Sox fan.

The horror.

More Re: Seeing Off a Daughter [Peter Robinson]

From another reader:

I sent my daughter to Cornell University. They sent back a liberal.

The horror.

Still More Re: Seeing Off a Daughter [Peter Robinson]

From a reader:

My son goes to Univ of New Hampshire and, much to her chagrin, my wife (and my neighbor's wife as well) discovered that boys usually don't call home for a month or so after leaving and don't like to be called either. I tried to explain to my wife that most boys are just like that. The girls, I hear, are entirely different, so your wife will not have to endure that.

There may be something to this. Within hours of reaching the campus, my daughter had Skyped her mother twice, once tilting her computer this way and that to show her mother her dorm room, and then, to my astonishment, called me, asking for directions to the mail room (she's attending my alma mater). My friend By contrast, my friend Andy tells me that, after seeing his son off to college, he and his wife had to wait a week before receiving an unsolicited telephone call. "He was in the laundry room. He wanted to know what all the buttons on the washing machine were for."

Re: Seeing Off A Daughter [Peter Robinson]

While my 18-year old is settling into her dorm room, other 18-year olds are risking their lives. From a reader:

I do not intend this to be snarky at all. It's just the first thing that popped into my head when I read your post and some of the follow-ups.

My wife and I also saw our daughter off last week. She's in the Air Force and now stationed at an Army field hospital somewhere in Afghanistan doing the work required to hopefully unscrew that place as much as possible. It is her first deployment and her mother is taking it pretty hard. We, as she, will make it through.

I don't know how to thank this young woman. I don't know how to thank their parents. I simply do not know.