CALLING ALL FRESHMEN

Really, the stories I am hearing from parents– and they are not just parents I know mind you, if you know Taylor you can ask her I talk to strangers, it’s a habit that sends her running out of Starbucks and right to the car. I have talked to some people I know and whose kids I know and I’ve talked to people I don’t know, but for the most part freshman parents are feeling the same thing. Their kids are being pretty much dicks when it comes to contacting them, calling when they say they will or even returning texts.

Just to get her off the hook here, Taylor has not been nearly as bad about this as some of her contemporaries. She has days when she is better than others, she is far better at returning a text, sometimes she doesn’t always return a call when she says she will, but the same accusation can be leveled against me at times. We are in some form of contact daily for the most part. Now that the new news is in about the radioactivity in phones, texting is far safer. So I am happy with texting much of the time.

She was stellar at parent’s weekend and when she was home.

If we are grading on scale of one to ten she can be as low as a five but as high as nine, so we will bring her in around seven point five.

The tens are clearly kids who call twice a day. Not that I’m sure that is always a good idea.

But I have heard about kids who are floating in the ones and twos, some might be a zero. Not calling for weeks, not returning texts, pretty much MIA and “high on their newfound independence” as one mom emailed me this morning.

I want to shoot down the “Professor” and “Concerned” before I write another word. These parents are not hovering, calling everyday, and being needy or smothering; they have raised these kids, they love them and would like from time to time to be treated with a little respect and love.

FRESHMEN – we have raised you and handed you your newfound independence on a platter. If we did not want you to go off and find your way in the world we would not have spent oodles of money on tutors, college counselors, and SAT Prep Programs. Parents would not have pulled strings to get their kids into schools and helped with essays or hired someone to do it unless we wanted to give you every possible advantage.

In fact unless you are a full scholarship kid who is holding down a job to cover your expenses, someone is earning over a hundred grand pre-tax dollars a year that are dedicated to bankrolling your newfound independent lifestyle.

That in itself deserves a conversation once a week that extends longer than three syllables followed with “I’m busy, I will call you back” which you seldom do.

You are being rude and unkind to the people who have loved you and taken care of you for eighteen years. It’s as simple as that, and that to me is the definition of an asshole.

I know parents who have bought fancy new phones in an attempt to get their child to call once in a blue moon.

LISTEN TO ME CAREFULLY: YOU CAN BE INDEPENDENT AND KIND TO PEOPLE. One has nothing whatsoever to do with the other.

You do not have to carve out your personal boundaries with a hatchet. You are hurting people’s feelings and it will come back to bite you in the ass, I promise you that. It never fails. If it doesn’t happen by the universe pulling the rug out from under you, then at some point in your life you will feel very guilty and badly about the way you are behaving now. Trust me.

There is a law in TV comedy writing that says don’t pick on someone’s joke if you don’t have a better one to replace it with. There is also the philosophy don’t criticize others unless you can offer up advice or an example where you behaved the same way and learned a lesson.
I was an asshole to my grandmother and it is without question the biggest regret in my entire fifty-one years on this planet. And I have lived a lot in those fifty-one years trust me. And I have made a lot of mistakes.

I regret other things as well; I regret nothing about my mother except the fact she refuses to grow up and be nice to me.

When I was eighteen I was so nice to my mother it was ridiculous. And despite the fact she despises me and I think if I were dying on the road she would walk by and perhaps kick dirt on me, if asked she would have to tell you I was a model teenager, never caused her a second of grief and did everything I was supposed to and said I would. I of course did not achieve independence that early, but that is for another day.

This does not mean I have not been an asshole in plenty of other areas of my life over the years.

I have been an asshole from time to time in my work and it cost me a lot. I will blog about that another day too.

The way I behaved towards the end of my first marriage were not my finest hours. But divorce seldom brings out the best in people. Though that in itself is not an excuse.

I have behaved badly at times with my children, hopefully I have always owned it and made right on it. Like I say in this blog all the time we are all humans and part of becoming better ones is learning on the road.

I have an evil twin who travels with me, she shows up at airports and can behave in the most hideous manner if my flight plans get messed up or I think I will be late, or god forbid my flight is canceled – all hell breaks lose. She has initiated many more problems than she has solved. Yelling at an American Airline representative in Miami once caused me to be stuck between two four hundred pound people in coach for three and a half hours. Yelling at a bus driver who spoke no English in Cario caused me to fall into a pile of luggage and did not get me to the terminal any sooner. I have thrown coats at Jet Blue, I have yelled at flight attendants when I can’t find my boarding pass. My evil airport twin is a total asshole. I hate her and she should have her passport revoked. This other me is the butt of many family jokes and I work at keeping her in check. We have a very long flight coming up in December, I’m sure she will make at least one appearance. If you hear of me being held by the Cambodian border patrol you will know why.

But in terms of things I wish I could really take back, number one is the way I treated my grandmother from the age of nineteen on. I was not intentionally mean to her anymore than I imagine any of you freshmen are intentionally mean to your parents. I loved my grandmother and aside from my husband she has been without question the person who showered me with more unconditional love and kindness in my lifetime than any other human being.

Sure, I have written about the fact she was nutty and I think truly unhappy, but she was beyond good to me and while I saw her I was usually too busy to give her more than the minimum amount of either face time or phone time I could get away with. If I had had a cell phone I am sure I would have texted my way through many a meal.

I remember once sitting in my apartment on Fifth Ave that she was paying for and her calling and me saying “I’m busy – can’t talk.” In this little voice she said, “You’re always busy, you can seldom talk. But I love you doll girl.”

She called me doll girl. She meant it.

As I write this I am crying and thinking why couldn’t I have fucking talked to her? What was I doing that was so important I couldn’t have shared a little of myself with this lonely woman who I meant the world to?

Who the fuck was I and who the fuck was I talking to that it was so important I couldn’t have called them back and given her a few minutes of my time? It would have made all the difference.

I can’t tell you who they were. I doubt they are still in my life today.

But the thought that I hurt her and I’m sure I did it time and time again still causes me to cringe and wish I could take it back.

Much like you FRESHMEN, I was young, self-involved and didn’t have a clue as to the frailty of life or how a little love and kindness can go such a long, long way.

Had she been a different kind of woman she would have said, “You miserable little bitch, if you can’t respond to me, kiss your Fifth Avenue apartment good-bye.” And she would have had every right to do so. And you know I probably would have respected her more if she had, but that wasn’t her nature.

She took what emotional left-overs I served up and made a meager meal of it.

And I HATE MYSELF FOR IT. Sometimes I go and sit at her grave and apologize and hope she can hear me. She was lonely, my grandfather had died, she loved me and made my life possible in many ways, and I was too selfish to be a better person to her and that fucking sucks. SHAME ON ME.

And shame on all of you who treat anybody that way now.

Sometimes, it takes growing up and experiencing things to understand the impact we have on others.

And sometimes, my freshmen friends, by the time that day arrives it’s too late to make right on your wrongs at least with the person you were not present for.

There is something few of you are aware of called the fragility of life.

At the moment you think you are omnipotent. You’re not and neither are your parents. None of us are. Some of you who have lost parents, or grandparents or even friends already understand this. It’s a hard way to learn and I’m not wishing it on you.

But any conversation you have or don’t have with anyone could be your last and that includes your friends as well as your parents. Now the chances are your parents will and could go before your friends. But it can happen and does, God – forbid, a plane goes down, a car skids into a tree (my friend Larry lost one of his friends two days ago like that) I lost my best friend suddenly at the age of 51 this summer. If that happens to someone you love and your last conversation was abrupt, rude or you never got back to them, you will feel like shit for the rest of your life. I’m not dong a guilt dance on your head, merely telling you the truth. And trust me this applies to everyone you encounter; kindness costs nothing and is more precious and truly appreciated than money.

The flipside of that is my grandfather who died when I was eighteen. I was at drama school in San Francisco. I remember exactly my last conversation with him. I was on my way out the door to meet to guys I have not seen since that summer– Bailey and David, I can’t believe I even remember their names– I was late, but my grandfather called me, I could have said, “I’m late, I will call you later.” But I didn’t. For some reason I didn’t treat him that way. I don’t think he would have put up with it for one thing. He demanded a certain respect and got it, plus he was sick and had been for a long time, but his immediate death was not really on our minds. He was sick the way he had been for years. Bad heart, several strokes, but hanging in.

That evening we talked about life and he told me what the expected from me, it was very simple be a good person and accomplish something. I told him I loved him; he died two weeks later, it was our last conversation.

The story speaks for itself.

Your parents are there for you – if they are good parents. And long after college is over or even perhaps during college; when you get in real trouble who will you turn to?

If you knock someone up or find yourself knocked up trust me, mom or dad are going to end up getting you out of it one way or another.

Look around right now, it may not be you, it won’t be the majority, but someone you know will be in rehab before they are twenty-five. A few joints a week will lead to everyday, everyday will lead to coke, binge drinking will lead to addiction and before you know it someone is footing the bill for Hazelden and trust me again on this one, it will not be your dealer or the guy you got high with last night. It will be your parents and it will be back to the family house you will return to get your life turned back around.

I have known and continue to know many people who this has happened to.

Many of my best friends are in AA, they make the best friends as they are the most responsible and self-aware, it’s a tough way to learn to be kind but it sure as hell works.

There are two million members of AA in this country, many are in college and many will be in AA before college ends and others will end up there in the years after and nine out of ten times, it will be their parents who come and help scrape them off the sidewalk.

I hear from parents that kids call when they want money or are buckling under the pressure or someone is being mean to them, but when things are good, they are MIA. Well, that sucks the big one.

That puts parents in the position of being your banker, your lawyer, your doctor and your shrink and yet WE PAY YOU. What is the problem with that picture?

I think in exchange for all those services that a call home every now and then is in order.

And I ask you this ah mighty freshmen, how many of you have younger siblings?

How many of you have called home, emailed them or sent a little note saying thinking of you, missing you or anything?
You have been around their entire lives, then poof you are gone – what does that teach them about life, love, family and connection? It teaches them not to trust you in the family dynamic and it teaches them to be scared when people they love go away that for any reason they will disappear.

Don’t do this to yourselves or them.

Younger siblings are happy with little, a hug on a Facebook page, a quick text “thinking of you, how is school?” It’s nothing out of your day and everything to them.

STOP BEING SELFISH.

You can have it all guys. You really can. It takes very little time and saves a lot of problems now and in the future.

If you treated a friend, a lover or a boss the way you do your parents, what would happen in that situation? You would get replaced, dumped or fired.

The lesson you will learn in life is if you treat people badly or without regards to their feelings you will pay a price, often a high one.

I talk to people in their late twenties too, I will talk to anyone and they say “I was a total bitch to my mom or parents when I was in school and now I feel awful about it.”

Hopefully their parents are alive and well and the roads have been reopened and everyone is happy, in most cases they are.

But life does not always work out that way. We hope it does, but we can’t count on it.

Your parents love you, they are in fact some of the few people who will continue to love you even when you are unkind to them. Perhaps it is why you try and usually can get away with it.
But nobody likes an asshole and if you learn that now it will save you a lot of misery later.

And always remember this my friends, no matter what your age any conversation you have with anyone could be your last.

FRESHMAN MOM