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Volume CXXXIII, Number 5 |
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I really like it when my mommy says I'm special
IAN
MORRISON
COLUMNIST
This weekend many of us will be ailed by a common enough encumbrance: The Parents. A self-diagnosis is straightforward. You walk about slower than usual, feeling weighted down. You feel vast and conspicuous, as if you require many chairs rather than one. You feel cramped. If you have any of these symptoms, you definitely have TP.
Especially common on Parents Weekend, TP is not unlike the common affliction of constipation. Both involve transporting past pleasures-turned-present pains across the Quad to class. You can't pay attention to lectures, and your notes look like they were written by someone very angry. Sitting, you sweat. Though you play it off as if everything is normal, everyone knows why you're just not feeling right. No matter what you wear, no one thinks you're hot.
Worst of all, you can't share your pain with anyone. You don't want to have to turn to drugs, but you need a release. You know if you could just stop stressing out for one moment, have just a minute of peace by yourself, then-yes!-your pain would clear up in a moment of Lysol-disinfected solitude on a chair ringed with two-ply.
Now, by making the connection between the anxiety and cramping caused by one's parents and the similar anxiety and cramping caused by a stagnant lower intestine, I am in no way insinuating that parents are fortnight-lodged bowel movements. No, parents are not last week's theme dinner. The fact that you would make a connection between TP and poop is, I think, a sign of your own failing relationship to the people from whose loins you sprang forth. And you're a potty-head.
Regardless of how one feels on the inside, I believe Parents Weekend as it is today is a good and noble thing (true). I've done some research on the subject (false). There was a time when some of the events of Parents Weekend had a way of enforcing "what a family should look like."
Take, for example, the "Biological Father-and-Son Basketball Tournament" or the "Mothers of Two Children Afternoon Tea." You won't find either of these events this weekend. Gone are those days when it was assumed that parents were like testicles: every student had two. And, it is not just the fact that there are now women at Bowdoin that has brought about this change in the way we view the student body's. . . err, parents. Even if you're born with two, that doesn't mean that 20-some years down the road you still have what you started with. Parents, like testicles, are not conserved quantities: you can gain and lose them over time.
Indeed, Parents Weekend today is nothing if not a celebration of our non-and-multi-testicled world. There have always been asymmetric households just as there have always been guys who walk funny. Here at Bowdoin, we embrace that. This Parents Weekend will have no exclusive events (though I am told the "You-Raised-My-Daughter-But-Now-I-Want-Her-Back! Mug Fight" was cut from Morell Lounge at the last minute). The posters in Smith Union will offer enthusiastic cheers like: "Guess how many I've got?" and "Our Parents: askew and we love you!"
Okay, so I might have ventured a little below the belt. Certainly, I've
given you many reasons to walk funny. However, there's one thing I want
to make clear: associate whatever you want with your parents; at least
many of you will have your parents here to associate with, and for that
you should be thankful. So, if you're lucky enough to have 'em, regardless
of how many, show 'em off to your friends; maybe they'll show you theirs
(parents, sicko). Things that cannot be conserved should be shared.
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