A plague of Okies

That time of year has come around again.  On Sunday, the roads in and out of town were clogged with Dorm Okies, Suburban Exodusters, College Joads: incoming students and their parents. 

All the cars, trucks, SUV's and minivans pull into town, piled high with boxes and suitcases and furniture and everything the student could possibly need.  Plus some other stuff.  There's something both reassuring and horrifying about that bumper to bumper procession of overloaded SUV's. 

On the one hand, it's nice that parents are still taking their kids off to the first day of college, just like they took them to the first day of kindergarten.  It's an equally big step to the one the kids took at age 5.  They need the emotional support and those last-minute twenty-dollar bills Mom and Dad are going to slip them.

On the other had, it's scary to contemplate how dependent on stuff these kids are.  Please excuse me while I go into old fart mode for a moment, but that was not my college dorm experience, nor the experience of anyone else in the dorm I lived in.  I went to college with a large suitcase, a laundry hamper, and a milk crate.  Basically, all I took was clothes, shoes, sheets, towels, a stereo, a dictionary, and a few odds and ends.

That was pretty much what everyone else brought, too.  Oh, sure some girls bought matching curtains and bedspreads and throw rugs for their rooms, and one girl brought a toaster, to maintain her Pop-Tart addiction.  Other than that, though, we made do.  Most of us used the computers and typewriters that were freely available all over campus. 

Watching the Suburban Exodusters on Sunday, I could see how far away those days were.  People were unloading microwaves and mini fridges.  TV's and computers and video game consoles.  Bunk beds and couches and scooters and exercise equipment.  All the comforts of home, in short, as though they expected college to be just like home only in a different town.  I wonder at what point they'll realize it isn't.