<p>What happened to saluation, signiture, punctation. I guess I should be thrilled DS took the vast amount of time to type p-l-e-a-s-e. </p>
<p>Both kids emailed grandma. S: I like my classes and my room.
D: A page cataloguing her courses, her current reading material, a description of all decorative items in room and pink/mauve door supplied by school.</p>
<p>But don’t we love our boys? I saw mine Tue and Wed for his 18th b’day. Seeing him at school where he definitely wasn’t my old cuddle bunny has made me blue. He asked if he could come home reading week (of course!) to see returning friends and I’m hoping my ole DS will be back with me.</p>
<p>Ugh! How maudlin, but I think I’ll let it stand because that’s really how I feel.</p>
<p>I wrote one to S the other day. I put in subject line “Favorite Sweatshirt”. I had sent it last week. The entire body of my email was </p>
<p>“Received?
Love, Mom”. </p>
<p>I had expected a one-word reponse --if that!
He, of course, wrote back</p>
<p>“Dearest Mother,
I am now in proud possession of my long-lost sweatshirt. How kind of you and Father to send it to me post-haste. I’m sure it will keep me warm as the temperatures drop in this northern clime. Waiting for your next missive.
Your beloved son,
—”</p>
<p>I don’t know who made the bigger point. I still haven’t written back.</p>
<p>It is not just kids. When I was in college, (many many moons ago), my father sent me a check that arrived on Valentine’s day and had no note with it. I was pretty bummed, the check was nice but many of my friends had gotten cards from their families. My father was a professional writer! When I lived in India for a year, I did not hear from him for months even though I had written to him. I finally wrote and told him that I would not be getting him any presents from India if I didn’t hear from him. I did finally get a very apologetic letter!
Ellen (who rarely gets emails from her older daughter but does get to chat on the phone with her occasionally. The last phone call I learned about German musical notation.)</p>
<p>Major excitement- just got a 4 topic email from DS! Unsolicited!<br>
It was very chatty for him, and included a discussion of upcoming expectations for cool stuff they will be learning in his Math class. I can hope that I’ll be learning more math in the weeks to come…</p>
<p>My father wrote long, long weekly letters to me while I was in college. About the weather. All weather is beautiful, apparently. </p>
<p>Over the years he added all of his children’s names to the top of his long weather letters until finally there were six names in the header. I received those for fifteen or twenty years.</p>
<p>I wrote lots of unbelievably frank :eek: letters from college; ie “I failed this test. I had too much to drink at this party.” I still write lots of emails.</p>
<p>My dad used to send all of us kids form letters (I kid you not!) typed by his secretary. If he wasn’t in a hurry, he would sign his name at the end. The few times that I got a hand-written letter, I knew I was in big trouble (probably for not writing back or calling!)</p>
<p>Edit: cross-posted with cheers! There were six of us as well, and his letters came for about ten or fifteen years…</p>
<p>Got 2nd email of the semester this morning from S:</p>
<p>“Mom, my friend is going to Spain for Christmas break. If I make back some of the money next summer, will you pay for me to go with him? Also, the dance is on Sat and I need $50; will you put some $$$ in my account?
Go Steelers. XXX”</p>
<p>Yep, that was it. Wants $50 now, $2,000 in Dec., and Go Steelers. I think I am pretty sure that last one is most likely. The other two: completely optional. I love email.</p>
<p>While I’ve also gotten the “please send my Nalgene” and “I think I left my favorite jeans in my closet”, we also got this gem a couple of weeks ago (this “boy” turns 21 very soon):</p>
<p>"Being the kind, considerate and caring son I am, I was just browsing amazon.com for birthday ideas to pass along to you, minimizing the
stress and effort you would have otherwise put forth in trying to find
the perfect gift. These are merely suggestions; I won’t be heart-broken
if you’ve decided I’ve put this off too long and have already found
something else.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The Hedge Knight – A book by George R.R. Martin.
ISBN-10: 1932796061
ISBN-13: 978-1932796063</p></li>
<li><p>Guitar Hero III Bundle Pre-order. It comes out October 21st, but Amazon.com is offering a pre-order for the regular price of the bundle.
Bundle comes with a guitar and the game. Now, you might think “__S#1
already has a guitar, why would he need another?” However, two guitars
allow me to grab a friend for multiplayer (and everyone loves guitar
hero), and the new guitars are a) wireless (old ones are not) and b)
styled after the Gibson Les Paul, the same style as my electric back home.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hope that helps. Now I’m going to go work on chemistry. My professor
made it very clear that a quiz of some sort will be doled out in class
this week, though we don’t know if it’s Tuesday or Thursday. He’s
smart; likes to keep us on our toes.</p>
<p>-____S#1 "</p>
<p>Yes, the Guitar Hero is pre-ordered; boys and their toys.</p>
<p>This thread has been very reassuring to me tonight as I have been stewing about the lack of communication from my freshman son. He has been away almost six weeks now and I have received a handful of e-mails which tell me he is alive but give me no idea about how school is going. </p>
<p>A typical sample:</p>
<p>“My soccer package arrived. My Game Informer package arrived. Yes, I
would like to keep getting those. Did you watch the NFL opener last
night? Peyton Manning, your favorite player, threw 3 TDs. Did you see
A-Rod hit 2 HRs in one inning the other night? That’s all I have to say
for now. Bye.”</p>
<p>Peyton Manning and A-Rod? What about his classes? Friends he has made? Fun stuff he has done? Sigh. That e-mail was about a month ago and I have not had much better from him since. Have resorted to a Sunday night call once a week that I have to initiate. (And yes, he is doing fine…)</p>
<p>Sometimes I think my parents would rather get few-word emails from me… I tend to give them a little too much information!!</p>
<p>But as long as I keep them informed about the “job search is going well”, “my roommates and I had a good time last night” and “had an exam, it was hard but I felt prepared” stuff on a regular basis, they don’t seem to mind hearing about an occasional “hangover so bad I had to skip class”!</p>
<p>Apparently, my daughter and her friends are the execeptions here. We drop her off, and spend the weekend wondering if she went to all those activities, and what she thought, and was she having fun. We sent an email, heard nothing. Called her cell, left a message, heard nothing. Called and reminded her we are now leaving the area, and did she need anything else. Nothing. Get home, one of the high school moms with a SON calls and tells me the high school kids have been hanging out together, and tells me what weekend activities they went to, and tells me they were all doing well. Score! Big news. Younger daughter over hears, texts her big sis that mom and dad have a local source. Yeah, she closed that leak within an hour. (Confirmed by local mom…)</p>
<p>On the good side, now she’s sending the occasional IM or email telling us what she’s up to. Correctly figures that all we want is a snippet of information. If she supplies it we won’t go looking.</p>
<p>S’s cell phone got mysteriously smashed during freshman year. So I go to the mall and check out all the possibilities for him as a replacement (he’s paying).</p>
<p>I write him a long email describing the ones I looked at, prices,features etc. and offered to pick one up for him ( he wasn’t getting home until really late at night after a long drive from college and had an all day Sat. committment).
I finish by saying please emaill back and let me know what to do.</p>