We’re off to Tuscaloosa today to drop Number One off at Bama. That’s right, pull up to the curb, shove him and his stuff out the door, and then pedal to the metal baby!<\/p>\n
I know, I know, it probably won’t be quite that simple. First off, you won’t be able to even find<\/em> the curb for all the hundreds of cars ahead of you, and then there’s the small matter of getting the stuff up to his room. And do you think Eyegal is just going to plop all that junk in there without doing some “arranging?” I don’t think so. And even after all that, there’ll be a Wal-Mart run (or two), plus the obligatory “last meal” consisting of stone cold food served at some overcrowded local eatery and then, finally, the goodbyes, which I’m sure won’t take long at all.<\/p>\n Anyway you slice it, Eyegal and I will have an easy time of it compared to our parents. In her case, they dropped her off at Harding and then proceeded to move to Brussels, Belgium for a 5-year work assignment. In my case, the first trip to college involved a two day trek in triple digit heat from Virginia to Searcy in August, 1980 with my recently-widowed mother in a borrowed Pontiac family truckster loaded with all my worldy possessions (Number One is packing so lightly that it’s leaving us thinking: Are you sure you have everything you need?<\/em>).<\/p>\n I even made a cheesy sign for the occasion and put it on the back of the wagon: Where in the World is Searcy, Arkansas? People would drive past us on the interstate, shrug their shoulders, and mouth the words: “You got me.” The more helpful ones would smile and point straight ahead.<\/p>\n As we drove across the Delta somewhere around Wynne, Arkansas, my mother had had just about enough of the endless sea of cotton, rice and soybean fields that stretched from one horizon to another. With tears streaming down her face, she turned to me and said: “I can’t believe you’re going to college in this God-forsaken place.” I tired to reassure her, but I remember thinking: I can’t believe it either<\/em>.<\/p>\n But once we got to Searcy and she saw the beautiful Front Lawn and the rest of campus, she was finally convinced that Arkansas did indeed have some trees and she started to settle down a bit.<\/p>\n Yeah, dropping off a kid at college–no big deal. I’m sure it’ll be easy. After all, this is the way it’s supposed to be, right?<\/p>\n (sigh).\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’re off to Tuscaloosa today to drop Number One off at Bama. That’s right, pull up to the curb, shove him and his stuff out the door, and then pedal to the metal baby! I know,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,48,32,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama-crimson-tide-football","category-family","category-harding-university","category-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9546,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}