We're heading up to Slippery Rock University today to visit my son, Patrick. Though it's very early in the school year to be visiting he's actually been there for about a month, having gone back to his apartment in mid-August. I mention that he'd gone back to his apartment, rather than back to school, so you'll note that while he was living at home this summer, we were still paying rent on his apartment. While that may seem a bit extreme to some of you, those who have children in college will automatically see this as being the norm. I have friends who paid for a college apartment and an apartment at the beach while their kids worked there for the summer. Why, you ask, are people paying for apartments all over God's green earth? The answer is simple, we must! And if our children also asked us to pay for an apartment on the Upper East side of Manhattan, we'd do that as well. We, the Baby Boomer generation, have created a monster, now affectionately known as the Echo Boom.
The Echo Boom is a lovely generation of kids who believe that the world owes them everything, and their parents are responsible for providing it. The hard part is that we taught them this behavior. Do you remember the Cabbage Patch craze in the mid-eighties? How many of you stood on line for hours waiting for them to be put on store shelves, only to trampled by the onslaught of other parents pushing and shoving with a single purpose - to buy this elusive doll for their progeny. How many of you searched the internet for hours and hours to buy the newest Nintendo, or XBox, or any other technological advancement that little Johnny and Jane just couldn't live without? And what about the clothing - $100 tennis shoes and $150 jeans? Sometimes I think that there is life on Mars but they won't come here to live because it would be just too darn expensive to raise their little Martians. And I don't blame them!!
But no one made us stand on those lines and no one threatened us with bodily harm if we didn't buy those tennis shoes. Nope, we just did it! We went out of our way to give them all that their young hearts desired and now we're paying for it. But here's the rub - they really are a generation of great kids with tons of promise. They might be spoiled but they are smart and incredibly well-equipped to tackle the next half-century of global interconnection. Heck, most of them have "friends" all over the world that they've connected with through their social networking websites. If I wanted to communicate with a kid in Europe, I had to go to great lengths to find a Pen Pal who wanted to exchange hand-written letters. Today, with the click of a mouse, this new generation can chat with people from the four corners of civilization. (That they do it on the newest and best Macs and PCs is just a technicality). The fact that our country's colleges and universities are busting at the seams, promises a future of well-educated and well-trained men and women ready to lead our nation. I just hope the economy improves or they'll also be really, really miserable!
Anyway, I am so looking forward to spending time with Patrick and having my family exist as a unit again. We'll eat together, share our latest life happenings, watch some college football, and, of course, SHOP!!
Peace Out!!
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