January 1998. My wife and I have been invited to attend a guidance session for parents of high school juniors who'll be applying to college next fall. As we approach the cafeteria, one of the moms, obviously already on the brink, takes a deep breath and says as calmly as possible, "All right. Here we go. This is going to be an ordeal." She seems to be trying to steady herself.
I look at her. "Hey, wait a minute," I say, casting myself as the voice of reason, in contrast to her scarcely controlled hysteria. "Our kids are applying to college. We're not applying to college. WE already got into college.”
My wife chimes in with the same smug tone, adding, "And I don't remember my parents going to any sessions like this!"
Of course they didn't. I can count on one hand the number of times my parents set foot in my schools -- and that goes for kindergarten through high school. When it came time for applying to college, I chose the ones to which I was applying. I signed up for the SATs. I wrote the essays and filled out the applications. Okay, my parents signed the checks, but that was the extent of it.
This time around, though, as parents, it's apparently a different ballgame. We're actually expected to get involved every step of the way. And the message isn't just coming from the basket case mom, mentioned above. Mr. Haydinger, head of our son's high school guidance department (who heretofore has always seemed on the sane side to me), grabs the mike and tells us solemnly that the process we're about to begin tonight will, over the course of the next 12 months, consume our lives and the lives of our whole families.
Yeah, right. My wife and I exchange knowing looks, feeling incredibly above this whole sordid fray. Mr. Haydinger may be saying this to all of us, but we know to whom he's really directing his warnings.
He's talking to the certifiably loony parents -- the upwardly mobiles, the intellectual wanna-bes, for whose kids only the top level Ivies will be good enough. He's talking to the infamous transcript building soccer moms who've been orchestrating their kids' play dates, athletic activities and academics from Gymboree right on through to their volunteer work last summer on an Indian pueblo in South Dakota. He's talking to the pathetically insecure parents who feel they never quite "made it," who need to live vicariously through their kids' achievements.
He's sure as hell not talking to us -- because we would never think of pressuring or choreographing our son during the college application process. No way. Our son will apply where he wants to apply. And he'll get in wherever he gets in.
Fast forward to the fall.
See me sitting at a bigger table, peering at my over-sized, two-foot by three-foot "War Board," on which I've rated 36 "suitable" colleges and universities on the basis of academic standing (according to U.S. News and World Report), geographic location, setting (urban, small-town, rural, etc.), size of undergraduate body, SAT scores needed for admission, chance of my son playing baseball, chance of my son playing football and miscellaneous comments like, Did we by any chance know someone who donated a building there?
Behind me on the wall is my three-foot by four-foot "Four-Year Accredited Colleges and Universities" map (Northwest edition) with multicolored pushpins brightly flagging the targeted schools. See my wife helping our son write on the ninth application he's filled out this week why his formative years in Bestport, Connecticut, make him such a perfect fit for campus life at East Jahypp State University in southwestern Montana, and how the fact that he once assistant-coached a fourth-grade recreation basketball team makes him the ideal candidate for that school's Honors Early Child Development major. (My wife, thank goodness, is in marketing -- positioning is her specialty.)
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