Giving your children a good education and helping them in their struggle to grow up does not end when they are twelve! Just read this funny story about our son, who went off to college…
My son moved to off campus housing this year to save money and to share a rental house with some of his friends. We helped him move in at the end of the summer. The rental was a shared housing situation that is common in most college communities. This house had two bedrooms on the main level with a bath, living room and kitchen. The upper level had two bedrooms and a bath as well as a sitting area.
The sitting area had two desks as well as a futon for overnight guests. Two of the renters had moved in the day before him so when we arrived there were pizza boxes on the coffee table in the living room. One of the young men quickly picked up the pizza boxes and threw them away when he saw that my husband and I were along to help with the move.
My son had struggled as a child to keep his room clean and his things organized. He has worked on this, but I was concerned that being in a larger space other than a dorm room, and having to contend with dishes might be a problem. My husband pointed out that he needs to learn sometime, so I hoped that this would be the time. We helped get him settled and then left for our trip back home. We made arrangements to come back for a visit to watch the college team play football in a few weeks.
The weekend that we went for the football game was perfect fall weather. The air was crisp and the sky was a deep blue. We arrived into town earlier than expected. We stopped at a bakery and picked up my son’s favorite Danish as well as several cups of coffee. When we arrived at the rental house my son had just gotten out of the shower. He told us to sit in the living room and he would finish getting dressed. The living room was literally covered in pizza boxes.
We could not believe our eyes. When my son saw the number of pizza boxes, he said that the other guys had been studying late the last few nights for mid-terms. He suggested that we follow him upstairs and we would have the Danish in the sitting area. The sitting area was not much better. There were three pizza boxes on the desk tops as well as a number of soda and beer cans. We started picking up the pizza boxes and cans and placed them into the overflowing garbage can. I took out the garbage bag and walked through the kitchen to put the garbage in the outside can.
There were a couple pizza boxes on the kitchen counter as well. One of the other renters was making himself breakfast. He told me that two of the guys that live in the house work at a local pizza place and so they bring home the leftovers from the buffet that is served there. At least my son was not paying huge amounts of money to contribute to the mess that the pizza boxes were creating in the house.