Pre-College Road Trip

neatoburrito
Sat, 16 Nov 2013 01:49:06 +0000

At what point are young people going to stop asking their parents’ permission and just start informing them of their whereabouts. I am trying to imagine, at 20 years old, asking my mother if it was OK to go on a road trip with my friend. It wouldn’t have crossed my mind! I would probably have told her so she new why I wasn’t home for Christmas.

I hope to god my daughter isn’t looking for my nod and approval (unless she wants money) to have an adventure when she is over 18. Jeez! I’d probably get a text letting me know that cell service might be spotty for the next few weeks, blah blah blah and I’d be perfectly OK with that.

I’d also push a kid onto a cruise with me saying, “have fun or you’re not going to college.”. Seriously, how are these kids going to cope with college if going on a cruise (which is essentially a floating shopping mall/amusement park) is too scary?

I completely appreciate the difference in kids personalities. I’m not nearly as comfortable letting my son roam free. He’s just as smart as his little sister but he’s kind of an idiot. (I mean that in the most endearing of ways.). Truly, he’s just not savvy enough, not assertive, enough to handle anything beyond solo flights to visit people he knows.

My littlest guy, on the other hand, will be fine. He’s the one who stopped traffic in a busy parking lot after a concert so the rest of us could cross when he was five years old. At seven, he walked away from me at Penn Station to ask a guard where the gate was. No worries about making his way.

The world is only scary if you only ever get to look at it on an HDTV from the comfort of suburbia.