Dorm Life....Uugh!

Every college freshmen and their parents, that is those pre-college students who choose to attend college in a far a distant, approach their new and free life away from home with bated breaths mixed with a bit of fear topped off with intense anticipation. As that mythic dorm check-in day looms, flights, hotel rooms and rental cars are booked.
The transition for most away college students begins quite mundanely with the college student and their parents lugging boxes and furniture up narrow stairwells and into miniature cubicles that Brooke or Tyler will share with a total stranger. Our youngest daughter had always been sensitive to our moods. Our journey across three thousand miles began with our daughter's luggage being lost by the airline. Every piece of clothing that we had purchased for her to cope with her new east coast life was just....gone. Our hotel, the Yankee Peddlar, was in fact a disheveled old rooming house that was struggling to stay afloat. Our adjoining rooms were small and the summer humdityand heat had worked its magic on the window air conditioner, in other words the only breeze that we felt wafted through screenless windows heavy with gnats and mosquitos. The nicest thing about our accommodations was the bathroom. The second nicest thing was a tap on our door at three in the morning to announce the airline had recovered our daughters lost luggage.
Is was easy to wake up early the next morning; the only person who slept that night was my husband, seasoned Marine who could fall asleep during a mortar attack. The drive from our hotel to the campus was uneventful, until we pulled up to the security gate and the realization that my daughter would be a very long air plane trip away from home. The guard pointed us toward the administration building where our daughter had to pick-up a packet that contained a map and directions to her dorm.
The streets of the campus was riddled with busy parents and students unloading moving/rental vans full of a bit of home; bookcases, lamps, linens, electric tea kettles and miniature rice cookers.
Move-in day on campuses across the country what with checking-in procedures and weepy moms and stotic dads can be a bit much for the average freshman. Our daughter's fate was a bit more challenging than most: her designated dorm would accommodate three young ladies. Although the room had classic, original hardwood floors from the mid-18th century, the room was small and dingy with little storage space and it was obvious that someone would have to sleep on the top bunk amd hazard falling off onto either the cramped, uncarpeted floor or the two desks used as a room divider. Privacy wasn't an issue: there wasn't any.
Somehow, even though we had arrived from the west coast, we were the first to arrive at our daughter's dorm. Within minutes the second roommate arrived and she and her parents were struck by the "quaintness" of their daughter's new environment. The two girls amicably shook hands and decided that the room needed a fast make-over.
My daughter's first e-mail revealed the makings of a classic "roommmate from hell scenario" that began to unfold her very first vening on campus.

E-mail (Aug, 2004)
Mom!
Apparently, because I arrived early and choose the best sleeping and studying arrangement, my roommates have decided to hate me.

G

Three hours after our arrival the third roommate appeared: angry, pissed-off and engaged in a verbal assualt against her parents that was reprehensible. The lare arrival inherited the top bunk. The late arrival snapped commands at her scurrying, quiescent parents. Her tones were so biting and sharp that it was impossbile for the rest us not to squirm. It was clear that this young, out-of-control young woman was used to being disrepectful to her parents as well as other people. She never once even breathed a hello to her other two roommates. Before we left our offspring before the parents scheduled departure of 5:00 PM, I couldn't help but to notice a visible sigh of relief from her two parents as they hurried down the three flights of stairs and to their car. I'm almsot certain that the follwoing months would be filled with a peace that neither had experienced since her birth!