Tuesday
Miscellaneous Rambling: Busyness and EMU Move-In Day
Whew. Summer is over. The four weeks from mid-to-late August to Labor Day blew through like a whirlwind with eight different sets of house guests and four out-of-town commitments. Each individual commitment by itself is fine--the house guests are all good folk that I enjoy; the out-of-town commitments ranged from the very fun (Cedar Point) to the obligatory (moving my son into his Freshman dorm)--but taken together, it's way too much so I'm glad it's over. * * * * * * * A family member once cynically suggested that I never like to do anything, to which I responded, "You wouldn't either, if you had commitments nearly every evening and weekend." I love candy, but if I had to eat a ton of it every night, I'd eventually rebel and seek to exclude all of it all the time. Different living situations, family arrangements, interests, and personalities result in different perspectives on how one ought to spend whatever free time one has. And contrary to the ridiculously-disingenuous argument that we all have the same number of hours in a day and days in a year, some people are objectively more busy than others. By "objectively," I mean some people have "hard" commitments that they cannot ignore without flirting with sins of omission: commitments to kids, one's job, etc. I'm not talking about gardening, golfing, and fantasy football: subjective, controllable commitments. I'm talking about the kind of commitments that, if ignored, would materially injure other people to whom a person owes duties. * * * * * * * I often analogize time to money. Some people have plenty of free time, others less so. No one should take offense if an objectively-busy person declines to spend his last ten cents on him. * * * * * * * So I dropped my son Jack off at college last week. He's attending Eastern Michigan University, which is a solid public university and probably the best value out there as far as four-year schools go (TDE readers know I think all college is a farce these days, just one of many ways our society has become absurd). EMU's student body is 22% black. I was really taken with the black students' arrival. Whereas every white kid showed up with a parent, maybe two parents, and maybe one sibling, the typical black student arrived with a retinue of people. It was pretty annoying. Things are pretty cramped trying to move in and when you ran into a black student, there'd be a huge cluster of people. But I was more interested in why. Why does the black freshman show up on move-in day with six people to help? I suspect it's an amalgam of factors. Here are the factors that I suspect play into it: Many of them are probably first-generation students, so the family members are excited and want to be a part of the "college experience." The people don't have jobs so they have plenty of free time. Since there is no nuclear family in the inner city, the expanded family/friends circle has acquired greater importance. * * * * * * * With Jack at college, Marie and I are now down to four children in the house. The old homestead grows steadily quieter. Some day, I'll probably wish I had back those hectic days of August and early September. * * * * * * * Short of a funeral, there's nothing that triggers the philosopher in a man more than his children moving through the stages of life.
