Sunday, November 10, 2013

Parents' Day Out

This was Family Weekend at Butler University.  Seth was anxious to have us come over and hang, but for what, he had no idea.  Apparently, they only email the schedule of events to the parents, and mine went missing until the night before, where I dug it out of the depths of emails I had gotten while on vacation for two weeks.  Electronics.  At best, a mixed blessing.

I had been texting back and forth with Seth all week, trying to figure out the plan, so finally on Friday, I sent him the web page explaining the weekend.  He replied "not much of interest," which kind of surprised me.  Butler goes all out, so they had everything going on from football, high ropes, drum circles, tours of the planetarium and Clowe's, to, of course, basketball.  He immediately replied, in typical Sethanese fashion, that he hadn't seen that you needed to click in order to see the list of events.  Oye vay.  He told me that we should just come over and hang, and maybe we could go watch the rehearsals for The Nutcracker (one of his friends is playing in the orchestra) or do a tour or two.  Then he told me not to come over early, because he was really tired, and his best friend was there spending the night, so he knew he'd be up late.  

This spiralled into a circle of confusion that lasted until the next afternoon, when I had given up hope of getting together and started cleaning and doing laundry.  Of course, that was when I got the text asking when I was coming over, because he was now up (it was 12:07pm).  More texting.  More confusion, and we agreed that he would come here for dinner, and I would go there at 2:30.  I called him when I was almost to campus, and was met with a "you're coming today?  I thought you were coming tomorrow!" Oye AND vay. He told me to come on over, because he and his lady friend were just hanging out.  Truth be told, in the flurry of texts, I was the one who messed up the details, but we were both fine with it, because it was a great time.

Did we do any of the Family Weekend events?  Nope.  We went to Starbucks on campus, where one of his roommates works.  We ended up sitting there for three hours, just chatting, while more and more of his friends and their parents wandered in.  I ended up finding out the following things:

1.  If you have a Scottish brogue and order water in a restaurant, you will more than likely be met with "we don't have that."  And Seth's buddy's mom can switch from the brogue to an American accent at the drop of a hat if she's thirsty.
2.  If you have a college student who comes home to do laundry, you are not allowed to order out.  Seth's girlfriend was offended when she went home to see her family and do laundry, but mostly to have a homecooked meal, and they decided to order Chinese takeout.  She felt deprived.
3.  Seth's roommate woke up to an unaccompanied female sleeping in the other roommate's bed.  Apparently, said roommate left to go do things and left his girlfriend sleeping in his bed.  Not cool.  
4.  Seth's posse includes Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, agnostics, and atheists, to say the least. Their political leanings vary from ultra conservative to liberal to apolitical. Their majors vary from violin to pharmacy, physics to creative writing.  One of his friends is British, and another is Polish.  Needless to say, the conversations are VERY interesting.
5.  Starbucks has these fantastic Refresher things that don't have coffee in them, and that taste AMAZING.  And Seth's girlfriend orders the same lattee at Starbucks as I do.  Serendipity and all that.
6.  The laundromats in the dorms don't take quarters, so when the internet is down, you can't do your laundry, because debit cards won't work.  Seth has yet to bring laundry home, but it's coming, I'm sure.
7.  You can make the Spare to the Throne unbelievably happy if you bring him back three boxes of salt water taffy from Florida.  He was almost giddy.  Yes, he loves the stuff that much.
8.  Seth's girlfriend understands Sethanese!  This is no small accomplishment, folks.  

Yes.  I have hope for our future, because these kids are amazing. 







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