Once upon a time, wealthy aristocrats sent their young people on a Grand Tour around Europe: to mature, acquire culture, and return as adults to supervise the family fortune.
Nowadays, we have our own version of the tour: visiting college campuses.
There are some differences. In the old days, the aristocratic parents didn’t travel with their offspring. What’s the point of being wealthy if you have to do that? No, that’s what tutors and governesses were for.
These days the point of the tour is to find the location which will do the educating… and swallow what remains of the family fortune. That’s why we must do it ourselves.
Lucky us.
I realized this while sitting in the waiting room for a visit to yet another college.
Our whirlwind tour had taken us through 5 schools in 4 days, and I had completely lost track of even which city we were in. But no matter where we were, my son somehow spotted an acquaintance. We were all on the grandest of tours!
The parents all had the same dazed, weary look that I noticed on my own face when we passed a mirror.
But family is important. It must be, considering how hard the kids work to avoid it. You can tell the degree of relatedness between a teen and an adult by how far away the first gets, from the second. When forced by circumstances to sit together, the relationship can instead be measured by EPMs – that is, Eyerolls Per Minute.
As the wait continues, you notice subtler signals between the adolescents – shoulder shrugs with the eyerolls, signifying, “See what I have to put up with?” Of course, we adults share similar messages: “Yes, I get that, too.”
I was under strict instructions to say nothing that could possibly cause embarrassment to my child. In practical terms, this means, “Say nothing. Do nothing. Try not to be here.” At least until it’s time to buy food.
The introductory lectures paint each place in such glowing terms, you want to say, “Never mind the kids, sign me up!” But you love your child, so you ask the barest minimum of questions, like “What percent of your graduates find jobs within a year?”
“Oh, Mom! You’re such a worrywart!”
Then it’s off to the endurance course, also known as the campus tour. I try to skip these, but some were unavoidable, so I trudged my best. And brilliant planner that I am, we had driven into the teeth of another winter storm … without proper footwear…so I distinguished myself, early in the week, by falling headlong into the snow. Of course, my child was as far away as possible, at the head of the group. By the time he noticed my absence I was back on my feet. “If you love them, you must let them go,” I told myself, “or they will roll their eyes non-stop and be insufferable at dinner.”
Fair weather or foul, these tours are always conducted at speeds that would wilt an Olympic athlete, up staircases and around corners, and – like the walk you used to take to school – uphill both ways. The student guides somehow manage it all, while talking non-stop, and walking backwards. Even more amazingly, they never seem to notice that, although the teens are all still with them, the parents are strewn about the landscape, gasping gently, like the weaker salmon who have failed to flap their way up the fish ladder around the dam.
I am convinced it is all a plot, just so the guides can impart their wisdom to the kids: “When you get back home, act like all you care about are the courses,” and “Tell them your greatest wish is get a job and pay off your student loans. They like to hear that. Then come and do whatever you want.”
I have some wisdom of my own to impart:
5. The weather will always be awful, no matter what time of year you go.
4. Your child will never be impressed by anything you say or do on one of these trips. At least, not favorably. If they stay within earshot, you’re doing well.
3. If your child is obnoxious to you, be grateful, for it will reconcile you to the next stage in your relationship, which is: they leave you.
2. No one is going to refund your parking expenses. You are the reason they charge for it!
1. This too shall pass. Eventually.
