ah, well, what ya gonna do
Today I carpooled 12 hours from Austin to Nashville. If I hadn't waited so long, I could have flown on SW, but, I waited too long. I do love a good road trip, but fast-stop-only-at-the-shell-station trips, not so much.
So, for 12 hours, I watched Texas turn into Arkansas into Tennessee.
Heard at a Shell station in Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock:
"I'm gonna check out the Shell Quick Stop shop, they had some unusual things in there, things I don't usually see, little cups and things."
It wasn't true, of course, they has the usual gimme caps, t-shirts, porcelain bells and coffee cups with phrases like, "Bubba's coffee".
My carpool companion and I, have very little in common. We both have kids at Belmont university, hence the quick trip to Nashville. I skirted the big issues, politics, religion, healthcare, using my favorite block, "dang, there are a lot of trucks out today, eh?"Many times divorce was mentioned as the great social ill, it ruins the kids, it's really really really a bad thing to do. I just shrugged "ah well, what ya gonna do?", as if to agree that there was just no fixin this one. Ghandi would have given me a B+.
I drove the last 300 miles, happily noting the mile markers counting down our arrival in Nashville. We drove up to the dorm and there was my daughter walking out to meet me. Tagging along behind her was that boy I've been hearing so much about. He reached out to shake my hand and I hugged him, which startled him a bit. I couldn't help it, I was so happy to be outside the car, to finally arrive, to have landed.
While Ace and the boy made another trip to the storage locker, I went to dinner with two of Ace's best friends and got the scoop on the niceness of the boy and a few other things. All good in those reports.
I was told the boy thinks I'm "cool and so little and not like a mom, ya know?" Maybe tomorrow I'll put on my "don't mess with my daughter" attitude and punch that boy in the shoulder, or something to show him I'm pretty tough and that he should be at least a little threatened by me, right? Nah, I can't help it, I like the kid...I like all of these kids.
I'm sleeping in the dorm tonight, in the bed of the roommate who just headed for home. The halls are full of girls, talking, laughing, hugging and occasionally tearing up at the idea of the first year of college being over. Two of them asked me, "Is this all bringing back memories?"
It took awhile, but then I remembered, Teresa, Diana, Kelly and Tammy, my little "dorm family". We stayed up until the wee hours talking about everything and nothing. We crushed on boys and made out with them between the dorms. We made many late night runs to the grocery store and one time Kelly and I, on a special mission to buy a friend a pregnancy test, ran into our English professor in the checkout line. It snowed one night and the next morning we joined the others in turning the campus into a kamikaze style snowball fight, after building one very skinny snowman. One night they all met me in my room late one night, having seen me driving around aimlessly in my car, crying. They handed me a spoon, passed me a pint of chocolate ice cream and said, "we got you some chocolate, we know you love chocolate, just talk when ready, we're here." There was the time Beth from Grand Rapids told me the best way to lose weight wasn't running at all, it was smoking and she could teach me how to smoke. Beth was disappointed when I couldn't hold a cigarette in my hand without laughing. There was the shocking wildness of the first frat party and deciding that drinking too much was really kind of stupid and boring and not even very fun. We would sneak certain smart boys in to play spades and talk all night about politics and anarchy and that Emerson essay. . .and it goes on...
So long ago. I'm sure we all promised each other we would stay in touch and be BFF, forever. I know we meant it at the time.
So, for 12 hours, I watched Texas turn into Arkansas into Tennessee.
Heard at a Shell station in Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock:
"I'm gonna check out the Shell Quick Stop shop, they had some unusual things in there, things I don't usually see, little cups and things."
It wasn't true, of course, they has the usual gimme caps, t-shirts, porcelain bells and coffee cups with phrases like, "Bubba's coffee".
My carpool companion and I, have very little in common. We both have kids at Belmont university, hence the quick trip to Nashville. I skirted the big issues, politics, religion, healthcare, using my favorite block, "dang, there are a lot of trucks out today, eh?"Many times divorce was mentioned as the great social ill, it ruins the kids, it's really really really a bad thing to do. I just shrugged "ah well, what ya gonna do?", as if to agree that there was just no fixin this one. Ghandi would have given me a B+.
I drove the last 300 miles, happily noting the mile markers counting down our arrival in Nashville. We drove up to the dorm and there was my daughter walking out to meet me. Tagging along behind her was that boy I've been hearing so much about. He reached out to shake my hand and I hugged him, which startled him a bit. I couldn't help it, I was so happy to be outside the car, to finally arrive, to have landed.
While Ace and the boy made another trip to the storage locker, I went to dinner with two of Ace's best friends and got the scoop on the niceness of the boy and a few other things. All good in those reports.
I was told the boy thinks I'm "cool and so little and not like a mom, ya know?" Maybe tomorrow I'll put on my "don't mess with my daughter" attitude and punch that boy in the shoulder, or something to show him I'm pretty tough and that he should be at least a little threatened by me, right? Nah, I can't help it, I like the kid...I like all of these kids.
I'm sleeping in the dorm tonight, in the bed of the roommate who just headed for home. The halls are full of girls, talking, laughing, hugging and occasionally tearing up at the idea of the first year of college being over. Two of them asked me, "Is this all bringing back memories?"
It took awhile, but then I remembered, Teresa, Diana, Kelly and Tammy, my little "dorm family". We stayed up until the wee hours talking about everything and nothing. We crushed on boys and made out with them between the dorms. We made many late night runs to the grocery store and one time Kelly and I, on a special mission to buy a friend a pregnancy test, ran into our English professor in the checkout line. It snowed one night and the next morning we joined the others in turning the campus into a kamikaze style snowball fight, after building one very skinny snowman. One night they all met me in my room late one night, having seen me driving around aimlessly in my car, crying. They handed me a spoon, passed me a pint of chocolate ice cream and said, "we got you some chocolate, we know you love chocolate, just talk when ready, we're here." There was the time Beth from Grand Rapids told me the best way to lose weight wasn't running at all, it was smoking and she could teach me how to smoke. Beth was disappointed when I couldn't hold a cigarette in my hand without laughing. There was the shocking wildness of the first frat party and deciding that drinking too much was really kind of stupid and boring and not even very fun. We would sneak certain smart boys in to play spades and talk all night about politics and anarchy and that Emerson essay. . .and it goes on...
So long ago. I'm sure we all promised each other we would stay in touch and be BFF, forever. I know we meant it at the time.
Labels: life
1 Comments:
Maybe the people at the Shell station were from Paris or something and really never HAD seen such kitsch...
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