Growing Pains

Written by Jen Wednesday, 09 June 2010 14:10

Blog

My husband walked into our son's high school graduation ceremony and remembered he left his wallet at home. And because I'm equally guilty of having less than $1 in my purse, he actually had to borrow money from my father to purchase a bottle of water. The timing was quite appropriate.

Yeah, kids can empty the pockets pretty quickly, especially teens. Clothes, tuition, medical bills, throw in some car repairs, insurance (and increases stemming from those car repairs), and the cow one boy can eat for dinner and the bucks go fast. And then there's the cost of college. Whew! Who isn't reeling just looking at those looonnnngggg numbers?

But I digress. We were able to breathe through the graduation festivities, enjoying the culmination of four years of hard work and countless afternoons asleep in the school parking lot (for us parents, of course, as we waited for the end of practice, meetings or, um, the occasional detention). Then my husband had to start looking back...remembering not only our son's babyhood but beyond that to our own college days. Since our son will be frequenting some of our own old haunts as he attends my husband's alma mater, a trip to the basement box of memorabilia was warranted.

Mistake

My spouse is a record-keeping maniac. He keeps impeccable files of indiscernible facts, among these his college tuition bill from 1981-82, and a lovely recruiting brochure showcasing a campus that for all practical purposes is long gone. It was a bit depressing, but then it got worse. Cost to educate a student in-state then was $1, 404. Room and board was $2,316. We gulped as we compared the numbers (and the hairstyles, incidentally...yikes! Those late '70 do's were quite fetching). Today, tuition is ten times that with room and board to match for in-state students. Coming from afar? Plan to live in a box as you pay off those loans.

A lot has changed in the past 30 years, but some things are timeless. Now we're the gray-haired parents looking shell-shocked as our kids prepare for their next adventure. Soon we will pack ‘em up and drop them off and drive away, looking forward to the day in the distant future when we'll shell out $10 for a bottle of water at our grandson's high school graduation.