Greg Freeman: From Long Hair to Macaroni and Cheese, Some Things Seem to Bridge Generations. StL P-D 6/11/2000

Headline: FROM LONG HAIR TO MACARONI AND CHEESE, SOME THINGS SEEM TO BRIDGE GENERATIONS
Reporter: By Greg Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Jun. 11, 2000 (reprinted 1/5/2003)
Section: METRO, Page: C3, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

The "heir" is once again apparent
It's been a noisy week at the Freeman household.
The "heir" is home. Our son Will is home from college - at least for a short while. He's headed back to Chicago this summer to work and take a class.

But he's taken a brief respite from the Windy City and landed in the Gateway City, and my wife and I are glad to see him.
Suddenly the CD player - the one I practically need a manual to operate - is getting plenty of use, with songs that I never heard of. The opinions about music are flowing, from Britney Spears ("No way!" "Overexposed!") to the Skatalites ("They rock!").
The phone is ringing more often these days, and the calls are almost always for Will.

He looks thinner than he did when we sent him to Chicago. From what he's told us, that should come as no surprise. The idea of a balanced meal apparently flew out the window at college. He and his roommates lived on staples such as ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese
Of course, macaroni and cheese reminded me of my own college days. In those days, you could get four boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese for a dollar. For a couple of bucks, I could have dinner for a week. Not the most nutritious, mind you - I guess it would have been nice to have eaten items such as vegetables and fruit - but I survived.

And Will has survived, seemingly no worse from the rigors of college. He somehow seems older, more mature. And not just because of the mustache and goatee that he's sprouted since high school. He seems more responsible. College has done good things for him.
He had a good school year, too. He hasn't gotten his second-semester grades back yet, but he thinks he did pretty well. And he did well during his first semester, as well. Freshman year can be a real shock to the system for some students - it certainly was for me - but he seems to have adapted remarkably well.

Meanwhile, I've promised myself to say very little about his long hair, which, he says, he is growing into dreadlocks. I'm doing my best not to become one of those grouchy parents who gripes all the time, "You kids! With the hair and the music!"
So far, I've remained pretty calm about it, which is less than my mother did when I was in college and grew a big Afro. I look back now at some of the pictures of myself during that time and laugh. Maybe a time will come when Will will do the same. Meanwhile, I'll just have to grin and bear it.

Likewise, I'll have to grin and bear my continuing status as First National Bank of Dad. Between spending money and sending money, there must be banks with fewer withdrawals. It goes with being the parent of a college student, though. No one wants their child to starve to death. So I've spent the year writing checks. While writing checks isn't my favorite thing in the world (Will has apparently told people that I'm notoriously cheap), it's still worth it to support him, if only for the hope that some day, years from now, he won't put us in a home.

At times, it's amazing for me to realize that I'm the father of a college student.
It hardly seems possible. It seems like only yesterday that I was a college student myself. My wife and I met in college, working for the school paper. Was it really that long ago? Aren't we still part of "the Pepsi generation"? Aren't we still "kinda young, kinda now"?
I'd like to think so, but Will, who I think views his parents as kind and well-meaning but hopelessly behind the times, would surely disagree.

Even the commercials for the products that used to target us - soft drinks, fast food, shampoo and the like - now pretty much ignore us. How many people with salt-and-pepper hair have you seen in a shampoo commercial lately?

The future is in the hands of people like my son. I must say that those are pretty good hands.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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