This weekend, my wife and I will drop our son off for his freshman year of college. I am anticipating an emotional parting; after all, it was me, not his mother, who used to get up at six in the morning when he was five to take him to hockey, or vice versa. I mean five in the morning when he was six, not that he would drive me to hockey.
“Okay, you got your picture, you can go now.”
In the pregnant moment before I hug him to say goodbye, I plan to pass on the wisdom I accumulated as a college student four decades ago; the lessons I learned at great cost, but which I pass on without charge. Such as, if you take the same course twice taught by a different professor each time, you will probably get a better grade the second time. Seriously. It helps your GPA.
“You got into Northwestern? But this is Boston!”
But there is more to life than the spiritual and intellectual aspects of our existence. There are also the mundane physical remnants of my college days, which I have lovingly preserved since that day in 1969 when I matriculated all over my college campus because the bathrooms weren’t ready yet. Here are a few of the artifacts that I plan to pass on to my impressionable college freshman.
This thing is like wicked fast.
Smith-Corona Manual Typewriter: I don’t think you’re ready for an electric yet, son. I know too many kids who have taken a high-powered typewriter out for a spin on a Saturday night after a long week of classes only to crash into a carrel at the library, killing paperback copies of The Importance of Being Earnest and Plato’s Republic. Which are available in Books-on-Tape format, by the way.
Frye boots.
Everybody will be wearing these when you get to school. Seriously. I mean, everybody who was anybody wore them in the fall of 1969. You’re not listening, are you?
8-Track, multi-LP stereo system.
This is a somewhat delicate subject, son. Your mother and I understand that you will want to have girls up into your dorm room, and that if your roommate is out of town for the Interscholastic Parcheesi Sectional Tournament you will have the place all to yourself for several days. When that happens, you can stack up to four LP’s on the spindle of this baby, and let nature take its course. When the last one drops and you’ve heard Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels sing “Devil With the Blue Dress On” forty-two times in succession, it’s time to go to class.
My albums
I can’t tell you how cool my album collection is. Was. Back when. As a matter of fact, I have albums by groups you’ve never even heard of. Like “Poco,” which was a spin-off from, uh, The Buffalo Springfield. I think. What do you mean, are they available in MP3 format. Do you mean the MC5–like “Kick Out the Jams”?
MC5: Gone, and one hopes, forgotten.
Husserl/Heidegger/Nietzsche: Gesundheit.
I’m giving you my well-thumbed copies of Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche), Being and Time (Heidegger), and Experience and Judgment (Husserl) with this admonition: If it sounds like a sneeze, don’t take the course.
