The kid is back. After 5 days, a tremendous amount of cell phone data expended, countless hours on a giant bus and all manner of historic sites explored throughout Washington D.C., my 14-year-old daughter has returned from her middle school trip. In one piece. With all the stuff she left with. (How’d that happen?) Without getting home sick or demanding we come get her. And without getting left behind at a monument when she was supposed to be on a bus, but instead went looking for a pretzel. (How’d that NOT happen?)
To think just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were worrying about getting her ready, getting her off and then what we would do with our time once she was gone. What it would feel like to be empty-nesters for a week, and whether it would take a psychological toll on us to have our only daughter go away.
Turns out it wasn’t that difficult, or different. There weren’t as many drinking glasses and candy wrappers left all over the house, and I never had to scream, “You had to walk farther to put that wrapper over there than if you just put it in the garbage!!!”
Boy, that was nice.
But I did learn some lessons. Things like:
• You eat out a lot when your kid is gone. Why is that? I thought I would cook so much, and cook things she hates that my wife and I enjoy. But you don’t cook. While you eat lots of food you never eat when your daughter is here, it turns out it’s all fast food fried chicken.
• Not only that, you lie about eating out a lot … especially when your mother calls to ask if you’ve been eating out a lot. Because you give her a very hard time about her diet and how she NEVER cooks and how she is always getting takeout. And she explains that this is just the way it goes when you get older and don’t have kids around anymore. That it will happen to you one day … starting the day your daughter heads off on a middle school trip. But you blow a raspberry and say things like, “NOPE! NEVER! NOT ME!” Ooops.
• Your mother will call a lot. Well, she already calls a lot. But she will call a lot more, just to ask how you’re doing. Is it different? Is it quieter? Are you OK? “OK?!?” I told her. “Are you kidding me? I’m eating fast food fried chicken in my boxer shorts … I mean HOME-MADE fried chicken in my boxer shorts.”
• The dog, who normally sleeps with your daughter, will move into your bedroom. Your dog will also be very itchy. Maybe it’s an allergic reaction to your kid being gone. Even worse, your dog will think the optimal time to scratch and chew herself like a pack of rabid, slobbering woodchucks is … 4:30 IN THE MORNING!!! Are you kidding me!?! Even worse, yelling, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!” will have no effect on your dog, but will thoroughly miff your sleeping wife.
• Your child uses a lot of cell phone data. Like a LOT of data. Like in the first 10 minutes she’s gone, you will have to contact your cell phone company and mortgage a kidney so you can increase her allotment. Lord knows what she’s doing. She will have used up more data than all of mankind generated in the last 250 years. She also will have burned out cell towers up and down the entire East Coast. The cell phone company is going to want you to pay for that!
It wasn’t what we expected, but the week with her away wasn’t all bad, either. Actually, it turned out pretty good. Like we can do this thing, one day, when she eventually goes off to college. Not that we can afford that right now. Because between all of the eating out and the cell phone data, I don’t think we’ll be able to afford anything for a very long, long time.