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Pro-tip: During the first week of classes, navigate the parking lots very, very carefully. Assume that all 360 degrees are in play. Trust me on this one.
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Dr. Laura June Davis posted on Twitter that this semester she renamed her office hours “student hours” for the first time, and noticed a distinct uptick in students visiting.
Sometimes it’s the little things. This one seems like it should be easy enough to try.
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Last weekend we saw “Blinded by the Light,” the new movie about a Pakistani/British teenager who becomes obsessed with Bruce Springsteen in 1987. We saw it at the theater in Freehold, where we live.
I mention this because Freehold actually appears in the movie. It’s Springsteen’s childhood home. The movie even includes a shot of Jersey Freeze, a locally famous ice cream place that’s still here. That drew a few “woo-hoo”s from the crowd.
The movie is alternately sad (showing the racism to which the hero’s family was subjected, and the tension between father and son) and sweet, but in my observation, it includes more shots of Freehold than any other commercial movie. The numbers tell the story:
Star Wars: 0 shots of Freehold
Citizen Kane: 0 shots of Freehold
Blinded by the Light: 4 shots of Freehold
Honestly, it’s like those other movies weren’t even trying.
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The Boy has been away for two weeks now. He’s thriving at college, despite a nasty cold having made the rounds through his dorm over the last week. Charlottesville is far enough inland that we’re not obsessing over Dorian; if he were on the coast, I don’t know what we’d be doing right now.
The differences in the house are subtle. Food is lasting a lot longer, for one. Bags of chips used to empty themselves mysteriously overnight; now, they don’t. The Dog seems to suspect something isn’t quite right. It’s unnervingly quiet.
But it’s okay. He’s jumping into college with both feet, as we knew he would.
The Girl, meanwhile, is taking full advantage of having the house’s resources to herself. TB built a firepit in the backyard a few years ago; she has already had friends over to sit around it. His room is bigger than hers, but she has already hosted sleepovers in it.
A couple of years ago, I predicted that when he left, I’d “miss him something awful.”
Yup.
