Dear Kid,

High schools, colleges, and countless friends do their best to prepare you for college. As your parents, we’ve spent the last 18 years trying to teach you the things you’ll need for a success life (and the last three months collecting things you’ll need for a successful first semester–still CANNOT believe how much all of that cost).

But, my darling, there are things we left out. Or may have glossed over. Or may have said several thousand times but are worried you didn’t hear.

So just in case you missed these…

1. The point of college is to learn something. Shocking, I know. Please try to find some time to get your homework done.

2. Not all learning takes place in the classroom. You never know where or from whom you will learn something interesting, relevant, or mildly amusing. A Great Sage once told me that nothing you learn is ever wasted. It may not be obvious how you’ll use what you’ve learned, but learning just for the sake of learning is a good thing.

3. Girls tend to prefer boys who do not smell like the bottom the sewer. Doing laundry every now and then is an excellent idea.

4. Kindness is never wasted. Be nice to someone today. Smile. You never know how much someone else needs that smile.

5. The other point of college is to make good friends. If you’re not comfortable telling your mother about your friends, they probably aren’t the people you’re supposed to be friends with.

6. Worrying is only useful up to a point. Think about this time last year: what were you worrying about then? (Besides football.) See what I mean?

7. Proofread. I just read a blurb (an entire three sentences) written by and about someone who describes herself as a tech-savvy writer and was trying to get companies to hire her. Yet there was great big honking grammatical error in the blurb. Yark! Did not inspire me to recommend her. (NOTE: the exception to looking down upon typos and mistooks is when your mother oops-es in this blog.)

8. Be polite. It’s free. But it generates a huge payback. It might even make you feel good.

9. Trust your instincts. You are a good kid. You make good decisions. Trust yourself.

10. We are still (and always) here for you. Seriously. Just because you are Acquiring Higher Education does not mean we stop being your parents. We’re here to help with anything we can. Except finding research sources at 2am–for that, you’re on your own.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

The English Language. It may not be perfect (ever think about the way the word “cough” is spelled?), it may be a little confusing (your, you’re, ur), but it’s ours.

Oh, English, English, English.

In a new comic,  Maria Scrivan shows four words that have taken on new meaning. The first is green which at one time referred to the color and now means environmentally friendly. I’ll leave it to you to click through to see the rest (my prediction is you’ll like the fourth one the best—let me know).

In other news, today is unofficially Take Your Gun to Starbucks Day. I kid you not. Go elsewhere for caffeine.

We didn’t watch the Persied Meteor Shower this weekend (at least this part of the ‘we’ didn’t—can’t swear that no one got up to view it). As expected, the inconvenient time (when will Mother Nature learn to check our schedules before planning a big event?) and the jam packed weekend meant we were more interested in the inside of our eyelids than the outside of the heavens. I have it on great authority that if you were somewhere without cloud cover (and you were looking in the right place), it was quite a glorious site. If you are so inclined, there are several more crazy early morning watchings available.

We also didn’t build a retaining wall this weekend. Turns out that Dad and I had a misunderstanding of what the wall was supposed to do. When he understood what I thought he meant (follow that?), he clarified. When I understood what he meant, I vetoed. No wall right now. But he and Pi did an excellent job pouring cement around the sewer drain to try to put a stop to the erosion problem. Even without a Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan did a Most Excellent Job of starting the planting bed for the Great Iris Expansion.

We did a fair amount of weeding yesterday. Booker spent most of the time basking in the sun. Note to self: Teach puppy to identify weeds and dig them up. Response to note to self: Ha!

There is an upside-down glass on the floor in our kitchen. This—as you well know—is the international signal for There Is A Bug Trapped Here That We Intend To Release Into The Wild But Has A 50/50 Chance of Dying Before We Get Around To It. Remember the saying in Animal Farm: Four legs good, two legs better? My version is: Four legs good, more legs outside. As in, Wildlife Belongs In the Wild Not In My Kitchen. Booker was no help at all. When the spider went scurrying across the floor he stared at me hopefully. I’m guessing the hopeful was for food and not permission to play with the spider since I was shrieking “Where is the spider??? Booker, get the spider!!!!” at the time.

Hope your (not you’re or ur) day is filled with the appropriate number of legs.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I’ve been thinking about libraries lately. I’ve also been visiting the library a fair amount.

Libraries—at least in this neck of the woods—are air conditioned. This may not seem very important, but it is, so I’m bothering telling you so (extra points if you get the reference).

The weather here has turned ridiculously, sweat-inducingly hot. And if one has a car without air conditioning, libraries are a delightful place to go for a bit without feeling obligated to buy a cup of over-caffeinated coffee.

Actually, libraries are delightful no matter what the weather. One of the first jobs I ever had was working at the library (I’m guessing when we lived in Poughkeepsie) and I volunteered (I’m guessing) and reshelved books (I’m positive).

The word is library. Not lie-berry, lie-barry, or even librarary, although librarary will probably make me smile.

Five Fun Facts About Libraries

• 68 percent of Americans have a library card.
• Americans check out more than 2 billion items each year from their public libraries; the average user takes out more than seven books a year.
• There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the US, yet Americans spend more than twice as much on candy as they do on public libraries
• The Library of Congress, founded in 1800, is the largest library in the world, with more than 155.3 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. People say you can go all sorts of place when you read, but you can travel the distance (as the shelf stacks) from the Library of Congress to Memphis, TN without leaving the building. The cultural trip might be more difficult.
• The smallest book in the Library of Congress is “Old King Cole.” It is 1/25” x 1/25”, or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

More about libraries tomorrow my dear.

In the meantime, enjoy a good book.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Hoarders have a gotten a lot of recognition recently. There are tweets, magazine articles, and TV shows highlighting homes with only narrow pathways (or sometimes no pathways at all) for floor space. Each of these articles or shows features a team that comes in to separate the hoarder from the accumulation (with varying degrees of drama and success).

Hoarders amass pretty much anything that comes across their path. They generally treat moldy plates with the same reverence as a platinum family heirloom.

Contrast hoarders with collectors.

Collectors curate their obsession interest. They keep the best and generally don’t bother with things that don’t have value. (Do not try to tell me that moldy paper plates have value to hoarders. I’m not listening.)

Collectors showcase their collections either for themselves or for others. They care for their collection and tend to it. When an item no longer has value for them, they sell it or trade it.

Guess who’s happier?

It seems to me that there are also hoarders and collectors of emotions. Some people seem to throw every feeling they’ve ever had into a big mosh pit in their brain and never clean things out. They treat an accidental slip of the tongue with the same level of importance and horror as a sibling suggesting a public duel. When necessary, emotional hoarders will even borrow miserableness from others (being upset because someone mistreated mom 3 decades ago). Their feelings have no expiration date and nothing is ever released.

Emotion collectors take a different approach. They hang on to emotions and experiences that have value to them and let go of the ones they no longer need.

Guess who’s happier?

Just to be clear, I’m not saying you should be happy all the time. I’m just suggesting that some events and emotions are worth letting go to make more room for the valuable ones you want to keep.

Love, Mom

Wake up! This might even be interesting!

Dear Kid,

Sometimes it’s worth knowing things you never thought you’d need to know.

By the skin of your teeth means a very narrow escape.

The phrase first appears in English in the Geneva Bible, 1560, in Job 19:20, which provides a literal translation of the original Hebrew:

“I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe.” Which clearly proves that not everything in Bible should be taken literally including spelling.

Teeth don’t have skin. They don’t have hair either, yet we still brush them. The English language is a funny thing. The writer may have been referring to the teeth’s surface or simply to the idea of minute measure. We will never know for sure, because dead men don’t tell tales.

Under no circumstances will you misuse this phrase and say “the skin on my teeth.” Yup. Heard that the other day.

Teeth don’t have skin but noses do.

It’s no skin off my nose.

This is a phrase that originated in the boxing community, a place well known for frequently removing skin from noses (and occasionally removing noses from faces). It basically means “That’s not my concern” or in today’s vernacular “Not my problem, dude.”

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Seriously. That is the correct phrase going all the way back to the 1600s. And pretty much the only way the phrase makes sense. But no one actually says the whole thing so saying it sounds a little silly. First of all, the “pudding” being referred to has nothing to do with the yummy dessert stuff. It was actually a mix of meats (like the inside of a sausage), and if it wasn’t cooked correctly was a fabulous way to make a lot of people sick. Or dead. So proving (or proofing) the pudding was ok meant to taste it (to be sure your guests would be alive for the dessert course).

These days, people often say, “the proof is in the pudding” which doesn’t make a lot of sense once you understand the whole phrase. It turns out that the correct shortened form of the phrase is “the proof of the pudding.” But that sounds silly (imho). My suggestion is to avoid the cliché altogether and come up with something more original.

Have a great day, kiddo.

Love, Mom

Barney is the college mascot of polite behavior.

Dear Kid,

What is the key-number-one-top-of-the-list most important thing you can control to make sure you have a successful future?

Not clean underwear, although that’s pretty high on the list.

Not a good sense of humor, although that will make you more fun to hang out with.

Not even a great college education, although I hope you are spending some time studying as your tuition is far too high to make it ok to ignore the studying part.

The number one, must have, most important thing you can learn is manners.

Way back when you used to watch Barney, the big purple guy used to sing about “Please and Thank You, ‘cause they’re the magic words. If animals could talk you’d hear the fishes and the birds saying Please and thank you, ‘cause they’re the magic words….” Do you have the tune running through your head right now? I do. Dang…must go find other music…

The number of rude and inconsiderate people in the world is staggering. There is absolutely no reason for you to be one of them and several gazillion reasons for you not to. It takes so little effort to be polite and has such a big payoff.

Yes, you guessed it. Someone was rude to me. It wasn’t even well-done rudeness where you could say to yourself, “ah, that person was being rude on purpose for a specific reason” or “oh, ho! That individual has made a study of rudeness and raised it to an art form” or even “I see someone has been reading Oscar Wilde again.” Nope. This was plain old, boring, inconsiderateness. Blech.

So here are today’s (and by today’s I really mean today, this minute because I’m thinking about it, not today meaning modern day) reminders about being polite.

• If there is a meeting/appointment/performance/class/study group, get there on time. By which I mean 5 to 10 minutes early. The only acceptable time for lateness is when it’s just a big party and people are coming and going all the time. If there is significant blood or fire, you might be forgiven if you are late but only if you singed or well bandaged.

• Apologize profusely for inadvertent rudeness. And if you are going to apologize, say you’re sorry like you mean it, not like your mother is standing there saying “what do you say…?”

• Offer to help. Or better yet, just help. Open a door, carry something, hold the elevator, clean up after yourself.

• Be gracious. If someone opens the door for you, offers to carry your books, or does something else that is kind, smile, say thank you, perhaps even return the favor. Under no circumstances should you ignore the gesture or refuse the assistance. (Note: in the 70s many women refused to let men open doors, etc. for them. They were Making a Point, and maybe it needed to be made then. Personally, I think even in that Not Quite Enlightened Time they could have been more gracious. More importantly, this is not Then and there is absolutely no reason to refuse courtesies.)

• Use those magic words. Please, thank you, excuse me, may I, good morning, I’ll see you tomorrow. You know the ones. The words you’d use if someone else’s mother was standing there.

I probably didn’t need to remind you of any of this. You probably never grunt at people as a way of communicating now that you’re in college. But I really am annoyed at the Rude Person. Thanks for listening,

Love, Mom