T w e n t y S i d e d
The year is 2020 and Logan’s bags are packed for college. He gets his syllabus, his books, and his parents drop him off at his new dorm. He’s only living an hour away, so visiting over the weekend is doable if he likes. His dorm is small, but he’s excited to be moving in and exploring the campus. His mom and dad offer to take him to dinner before they leave, and he agrees, but they can tell he wants to be doing other things. He has an entire new space to explore, and he’s a social guy. They ask him if they can get a rain check on dinner, instead ensuring he’d at least visit that weekend.
They’re getting weepy on the drive home when their phones start going off rapid-fire. Kelly panics for a moment, before discovering that Logan is texting the both of them pictures of campus and things he’s excited about. The café, a selfie with an office manager, the library, an instructional walkthrough of using a home computer, circa 1976, followed by about sixteen laughing emojis. This doesn’t stop them from being weepy, but it does put some of their fears aside. Logan is a smart young man, and they can experience a bittersweet mixture of pride and sadness together as a couple.
Pulling up to the house an hour later, it’s quiet, and the upstairs lights are off. There is a logical understanding to be had that obviously the house will be quieter. They were somewhat prepared for that. But it’s one thing to know it and another to feel it. The house is quiet, and they can suddenly hear the creaks and echoes they never seemed to before. The screen door closes a little too loudly, and placing their shoes by the door seems to put the sound through the whole house.
The BookNook is dark, closed for the day with no one home. As the streetlights click on one by one outside, Michael and Kelly sit at the kitchen table, waiting for the kettle to boil for tea.
“Does college count as an empty nest?” Kelly asks, brow furrowed in thought.
“I’m…honestly not sure…?” Michael says, prompted by the gentle whistle of the kettle to get up and pour the hot water into mugs.
“Part-time empty-nesters, maybe?” Kelly laughs. They’re in their forties, barely, and feel young for it, but they had Logan young so that makes sense.
The sadness of it all is at least helped by the consistent dinging of both of their phones. Logan is fine. Maybe even better than his parents are. This isn’t forever, Logan will come home from college on the weekends, summer, and during holidays. And when he graduates he’ll come back for awhile. But even this pocket-sized quiet gets Kelly and Michael talking.
The house is lovely, and something they want to keep in the family. There isn’t any question there. But it’s a bit big for just two people, alone. It isn’t a ‘right now’ plan, but they sit and talk for awhile what they might like when their older. They agree on a savings account, for now, so that if they ever find they need to downsize, they can afford to buy something smaller. The house they live in has no mortgage on it, allowing them to put aside money easier than most. They worry that this will be the last generation in the house. It’s possible that Logan won’t want to start a family and continue things. It’ll still go to him, but likely when his parents pass away, rather than downsizing earlier and giving it to him. They get caught up in ‘what ifs’ long into the night.
Kelly laments briefly that they didn’t have another kid. Michael holds his wife. Kelly isn’t really upset they didn’t have a second. In reality, she’s upset they didn’t have the good sense to have a child that grew slower.
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
That’s a really sweet last line.
As someone who’s getting close to his mid-40’s, that hit hard too. It feels like every day there’s another reminder of things that I put aside for “some day” that due to various circumstances, will almost never be undertaken now. There is nostalgia, regrets, and a whole lotta “what if’s” that come up more frequently. At times I feel like one of those bitter old men who look back on their life and realize that they spent it chasing after the wrong thing, but it’s too late to do anything to change the path you’re on.
Aw :(
Makes me think of that Gandalf quote, perhaps paraphrased so as to be less about living through hard times, and more about the past & future. I obsess over time spent and lost opportunities as I think so many people do (hence this weird accelerated mid-life crisis around turning 30), and often feel like I need to “solve” my life such that it is set up to be good in the future – I often have to remind myself that the past is done, the path it has created is more a detailed history than a furrow I’ve ended up in, people change with time and next year’s me might feel differently about things, and all that matters now is to try to enjoy the present while allowing for a reasonable future. Which is one reason I made the decision to move to working 4 days a week, because I’m fortunate enough to be able to do so. So many other people my age seem to be thinking along the same lines too, already feeling tired and old and jaded at 30 somehow, and looking for opportunity to enjoy life more (as unbelievably entitled as that sounds!) I think it would be easier to take my own advice if there weren’t so many 18-22 year olds around, looking all attractive and energetic!!
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Thanks. That did actually help. :)
And ironically, as a passionate lifelong gamer I pretty much see those energized, enthusiastic 18-22 year old’s every day and regard them with a mixed sense of amusement for the disappointments I know are coming their way, and envy at being able to feel like they do again.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Wait, we both are.
Awwwww.
An hour away? Why would they even put him in a dorm? Assuming that’s “about an hour” and includes the walk from the station that’s barely enough time to even study on the bus or train and… oh wait, the US. Meaning that 1) public transit is non-existent and 2) “hour away” means like 100+km.
Yep, in the US an hour away means by a car on the highway, and that’s dependant on traffic.
That said, there are plenty of folks who would take a near hour commute for college, I knew a few folks that did just that. But for some people, living in a college dorm is a way to sort of trial run living on your own. A way to get a sense of the independence of having your own place without the responsibilities of getting a whole apartment for the first time. For someone like Logan, I imagine that was a pretty big draw to the college experience.
Which makes the possible looking Covid and the shutdown of colleges and move to study from home a somewhat worrisome possibility…
Ah, the college commute. I had a five minute drive to get to the bus stop, then seventy-five minutes on the bus, then a forty-five minute wait because the bus arrived fifteen minutes after classes started, then doing it all in reverse to go home. So four hours lost to transit every day,
Every once in a while I would drive the whole way instead, but that was $5 in gas instead. They might have charged parking too.
I went to college about 50 minutes from my parents’ house and hell yes I lived in the dorms. I spent my whole childhood dreaming of nothing more than not having to live with my parents anymore.
Logan likes his parents more than I liked mine, but there’s nothing at all unusual about him wanting to Live On His Own, away from his parents’ eyes and ears. Especially given how extroverted he is.
Bay, I binged this series over the last week. You are a terrific writer. I have no doubt Shamus greatly enjoys reading your posts on the microwave.
Universities market themselves in the UK so heavily on the “freshers” experience of clubs and partying that is allegedly the best time of your life – such that they manage to make people forget that they are expensive academic institutions, and that partying and clubs are not reserved for 18 year olds who go to university and stay in first-year halls of residence. In fact they manage to make most people feel like Freshers Week is the best moment of one’s life and cannot be wasted. So an hour is plenty far away to need to be worth going into university accommodation, can’t miss out on all the “good stuff” and alleged sex you’ll be having.
Haha even without that there’s no way I’d have commuted an hour to university, precisely because I live in a small country with public transport. An hour sounds like a long time. I guess I technically went to university exactly an hour drive away from my parent’s home, but I didn’t drive / have a car. But that was back when fees were a lot lower in this country than they are now, the student loan interest rate was low, and university seemed a sure-fire way to get a decent job, or indeed worthwhile whatsoever…
I guess if it had been an hour door to door staying within the same city then it could have been different.
…until you get to Cranfield University (as I did), notice that rents are about twice what they are back home and only a little lower than in friggin’ London but there’s just one bus per hour, and it stops at every friggin’ lamp post, and cycling on British country roads is … not recommended. These days, there’s at least a cycle path from the Village, I hear, but the rents have more than doubled since I lived on campus.
Oh, and parties? There’s the student association bar which has a multi-purpose room. Cool. Sometimes they even show movies or sport games, on a big screen.
But then again, considering the current study fees (especially for non-British students), it’s somehow okay that you can’t do anything but get done with studying. It’s a shame though, because where I come from, studying *should* be about 50% life experience and 50% lectures, assignments and exams.
I just had my first child 10 weeks ago. I’m obviously biased, but she’s the cutest, most precious baby ever, even with her being particularly fussy today due to vaccines. I’m a person who plans things out, even far into the future, it helps ease my worry even if things don’t play out the way I think. So I’ve already been thinking about how I’m going to feel when she’s old enough to move out. It makes my heart hurt and I barely even know her yet. This entry hits all those buttons.
I just want to do right by her. I hope I can give her the tools she’ll need to be happy.
Aw, it seems a shame that so many people in the modern world move far away from home and community, in distance and in life. I don’t believe it’s the same in most countries, a Chinese student at my university said he’d stay at home until he was married and that that was standard, he was 24 at the time – although saying that he was halfway across the world from his home at the time studying. In fact in the UK it’s pretty standard for working class people to move round the corner from their parents and still see them all the time (obviously including for childcare but moreso just as the natural continuation of life). It’s just us middle class fools here who abandon everything to go and “have fun” and can’t imagine living (much less having partners) in the same house as our parents as adults, and end up lonely somewhere relying on colleagues, partners and Tinder for company. I wonder if it’s partly American TV influence – like the apparent need to have a car as a teenager and gain one’s “freedom”.
<3