<p>missypie - how’s this - Last night we had an extensive conversation about a family brunch for younger daughters’ Sweet 16 on June 13 (her birthday is June 14, Flag Day). I get an email from his assistant this morning - can he meet someone on the morning of the 13? My response, “No, and I’m not going to embarrass him by reminding him why.” Okay, she says, he wants to know about the 20th, my response - fine. (It’s Fathers Day; if he can’t remember, I’m not reminding him.)</p>
<p>I think men are lazy and if they can get someone to do their thinking they will!</p>
<p>With apologies to Shawbridge, I tend to agree. I just can’t imagine how things got done when men totally ran the world…not the “recent” old days when they had excellent female secretaries, but the old old days when “nice women” really didn’t work outside the home and even the secretaries were male.</p>
<p>Hey, I plead guilty. I have an assistant who is responsible for business and personal sides of my life, an office manager, a 1-2 times per week housekeeper/jack of all trades and a house cleaner (all four female) trying to make sure that all of the things I’m supposed to do get done and a wife worrying about another set of things. I’ve got two other women in my office who also help keep certain aspects of my business organized. </p>
<p>And, as they say in infomercial world, there’s more. I often stay at the same hotel in various cities. For example, I stayed at the same hotel in London six times in the last six weeks. There is sometimes an extremely solicitous hotel employee who wants to make sure everything is OK. They are usually female too. At the London hotel mentioned above, there is a 23(?) year old blond-haired, blue-eyed (East) German hotel employee who always takes care of my reservations and arranges upgrades, early room entry, deliveries etc. without my asking. She’s very chatty with my assistant. I had to go to a charity benefit in London and she had taken care of getting my tux to and from rental place – and they had mistakenly sent an extra. A couple of trips ago, I virtually had to kick her out of my room as she was trying to make sure I had everything I needed. I’ve never been sure if there’s a hidden agenda there, though my assistant thinks so. This is another area in which I rely on female judgment (my assistant and my wife) rather than my own.</p>
<p>Then, at my clients, the execs I work with (male and female) often have (almost always female) assistants and some of them try to make sure I’m taken care of (usually just rides and coffees, but it can go well beyond that – one helped arrange part of a family vacation in Australia). </p>
<p>I only do a few things well, but in my defense, those things the world seems to value highly. That thinking I do myself: part of my job is creating intellectual capital – ideas that are useful and valuable to others and generalize across a class of situations. To make them valuable and to make sure I can concentrate on what I do best, I rely on a whole lot of people who get things done and many of them are female.</p>
<p>Don’t even get me started on this topic. I’m a female executive at a construction company and the stories I could tell! [making the rational decision to keep blood pressure lowered, watch me hit send and close the screen]</p>
<p>D called last night and said that she was having trouble packing. There was no where in her small room to put what she had packed and she couldn’t see through what she had packed to understand what she still had left to pack. Now I probably helped her too much when she packed to go to school I warned H who drove there today to pick up her stuff. He called and said that he had managed to keep his temper but the kid didn’t have a clue how to pack. None of her boxes would close as they were stuffed, she is driving to Fl. with a friend after her exam tomorrow from Maine and she had all these bags that she was going to take to Fl. H indicated that that wasn’t going to work for the flight - she said I’m driving not flying. Well yes but you are flying home from Fl. in a few days. There are days where I’m surprised how much she has grown and other like today where I wonder how she manages to get by… Oh well hopefully the trip will good but uneventful and she will have fun. I’ll worry until she arrives in Fl. or maybe I should say until she arrives back home!</p>
<p>Oh, RM, I can see my daughter’s room at school all over again! That is exactly the same scenario we had. She’s back at school now but now in her permanent apartment- so her room at home is full of boxes that are just a jumble of everything. Except for the boxes her father packed when we got there. She headed off to the beach and i worried continuously until she was home. Now I’m worrying continuously again!</p>
<p>H arrived at the beach a day ahead of the rest of us. He’d actually gotten a good start on all the “opening up” work, including cleaning up after a wayward squirrel that had gotten into the back entry/laundry area over the winter. He said it was a real mess and he figured I’d freak out about it. He’s right, I would have (I do bugs, not animals) – so 3 cheers for him for cleaning up! I also made the executive decision that D & S could do all the windows this year – cleaning the screens, washing, etc. When everything was finished, D said, “Wow, that’s a lot of hard work.” I simply smiled and nodded.</p>
<p>missypie, your post reminds me of the numerous times D has called me from the road to ask if I could get on the computer to find out where she is because she’s lost. Several of those times I haven’t been near a computer, and I had to suggest she stop and ask for directions. What a novel idea!</p>
Me too! So when McSon was about to turn 15, I took a “public transportation” tour with him one summer from Michigan to Chicago, flew to Seattle and then did public transportation up to Vancouver and then north along the coast. We backpacked and stayed in youth hostels. I armed him with strategies re homeless drug addicts (Vancouver was full of em) and tips for traveling on buses and trains. I made him pay his own way out of his summer earnings, and any activity we did, he had to be able to afford his share. (Cheapest trip we ever took.)</p>
<p>The point of the trip was sort of “whatever you do in live and whatever money you have you can always go places and see things and be a smart, safe traveler, in town or out of town. You do not need golden handcuffs, you do not need to drive, you don’t need parents to drive you, you do not actually need a lot of money, you do not need to rely on parents, friends, family or others to do something you really want to do.”</p>
<p>It was a trip we treasured but had a few unexpected consequences. The positive ones included the fact that he’s very independent about getting around via public transit and is a comfortable traveler, and has maintained friendships in other cities by using the bus, train etc. The second positive one was that seeing the drug addicts living on the street, who’d refuse his offers of food but ask for money, really broke his heart but has also kept him away from drugs.</p>
<p>The consequence I’m not so sure about was he elected not to go to NYU because he did not want to live in NYC at such a young age and did not want to be so far away from home as an undergrad. (Don’t get me wrong, he’s happy where he is. I just wonder if I turned him off of big city living inadvertently – because UBC also has a great program he would have enjoyed and he distinctly did not apply because he did not want to live in Vancouver either.)</p>
<p>The second questionable consequence was that after that, he was in no hurry to learn to drive and still only has his beginners. Which means that a lot of times I still end up driving him, but only voluntarily. He does not count on it ;)</p>
<p>km, I think that sounds like a wonderful trip. My thought on the city is that you gave him the exposure he needed to know how he feels about cities, so made the right college decision for him. </p>
<p>I loathe cities (although lived in several including NYC out of job “necessity” for far too long) while H loves city life and would move back in a heartbeat. S1 also loves big cities like NYC, Rio, and Lima, while S2 can’t stay far enough away from those places. It sounds like your S just knows his own mind.</p>
<p>That he does. He has, however, found a city that he loves after a music tour last summer. Unfortunately, (for me) it’s Munich
I am selfishly hopeful that he never learns German, or else I will be far away indeed from any future adult visits, nearby grandchildren, etc. Then again, it has not been a banner year in the GF dept., so I suspect there are many years to unfold before I need concern myself about that one!!! You must muse the same way re: S1. And at the same time be excited for his freedom to experience the world!</p>
<p>I think I would enjoy living in a city for a while, then I suspect like everything else it would get “old”. I do not particularly enjoy driving so the availability of public transportation would be a huge plus for me. </p>
<p>KM, you are constantly amazing me with the great preparation for life you gave your son. Everytime I come to this thread I am thinking “why didn’t I think of that?” when I read what so many of you have done.</p>
I was thinking the same thing. I have gained so much good parenting advice on CC, but a lot of it is too late for me to apply to my own kids. However, I will be a wonderful source of parenting wisdom for my kids as they raise my grandkids ;)</p>
<p>On a more serious note, we’ve experienced the second driving fatality among our HS students in 18 months. The first was due to inexperience in heavy rain on the highway; the cause of the recent accident, which took the life of the driver who was alone in the car is unclear. The paper reports that police “do not suspect that alcohol or drug use was involved”, but <em>everyone</em> says he’d been drinking. Regardless, another grieving family and lots of very sad teens in our little town.</p>
<p>Shawbridge - you sound exactly like my husband! It always amazes me that he can run a multibillion dollar company but can’t take care of so many everyday, but important, things.</p>
<p>We are going to Chicago with our 17 year old to visit a couple of schools and I’d really NOT like to rent a car, just so we all figure out how to get around on public transportation. I know H is going to want a car so he can visit some of his suburban haunts, however.</p>
<p>D1 attended a sports camp several summers ago at Stanford. Since it involved a transcontinental flight and getting around the greater bay area, I went along. We toured Cal Berkeley before the camp. Other than a taxi to the first hotel in Berkeley (arriving around midnight), we relied on public transportation for the six day trip. Subway, train, many buses, and a lot of walking for me. It gave both of us a greater appreciation for the potential logistics of going to and from college, and it was a relief when she decided to focus on applying to colleges in the east! Now the hour and a half drive (one way) to take her to the train for the six-hour train trip (with two connections) doesn’t seem so bad.</p>
<p>We took the kids to Greece when they were ages 6 and 9. H had the four of us take a city bus from the airport to downtown Athens where we got off with all of our luggage in what he thought was the general vicinity of our hotel. After pulling the bags (and children) in terrible heat through crowds for about five blocks, I became a mule and just sat down on my suitcase and ordered H to find the hotel and come back for us when he knew exactly where we were going. Our kids definitely know how to handle public transportation in any city in the world because H is so “frugal.” </p>
<p>I will have to ask S1 if he took a cab from the airport to his hotel in Brisbane. I’m betting he didn’t even though it would have been paid for by the company and he had all of his worldly possessions with him. It just goes against how he was raised.</p>
<p>I am pretty comfortable with DC Metro but D just has an aversion to the bus. She’d rather walk to get around than get on the bus, which is fine if you have the time and the weather is cooperative. While in law school I relied on the bus system to get me to and from work regularly. Daily I think how wonderful it would be to have mass transit to get to work.</p>
I warned H who drove there today to pick up her stuff. He called and said that he had managed to keep his temper but the kid didn’t have a clue how to pack. None of her boxes would close as they were stuffed, she is driving to Fl. with a friend after her exam tomorrow from Maine and she had all these bags that she was going to take to Fl. H indicated that that wasn’t going to work for the flight - she said I’m driving not flying. Well yes but you are flying home from Fl. in a few days. There are days where I’m surprised how much she has grown and other like today where I wonder how she manages to get by… Oh well hopefully the trip will good but uneventful and she will have fun. I’ll worry until she arrives in Fl. or maybe I should say until she arrives back home!</p>