Senior Year by Dan Shaughnessy

Author:Dan Shaughnessy [Shaughnessy, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

January

Marilou woke up in a sweat one night and said she'd dreamed that Sam got busted for possession of marijuana. I told her that there was a greater likelihood he'd be spotted buying a ticket to Guys and Dolls. In other words, forget about it and go back to sleep.

Sam was nine months' shy of college, and that meant we were still allowed to worry about doomsday scenarios. This vanishes when they finish high school. Kids go off to college and we have no idea how late they are out, who they are with, or what they might be up to. But as long as a child is still under our roof, living in the high school universe, house rules apply and we worry about anything that might blow up the plan. Years earlier, the son of one of our neighbors jeopardized his college admission when he got arrested at a high school pot party. More recently, we'd come to learn that one of Sam's high school friends, a kid who'd crashed in Sam's room more than once, was busted by his own mom. The young man was caught with marijuana, which he intended to sell. There's nothing particularly revolutionary about any of this, but it speaks to the sensitive nature of these final, fragile days of young people living in our home.

Our second floor Teenage Wasteland was in sorry shape after the holidays. Sam's sisters were both home on break, and we also had Kate's boyfriend (his parents live in California), Alexis, and random high school seniors grabbing some floor when both beds in Sam's room were occupied. I had missed all this chaos when the girls were away, and it reminded me of how quiet it was going to be for most of the rest of our days here after Sam graduates. Not something I'm looking forward to. I think I'll leave the second floor bathroom light on as a household eternal flame.

Louisville Sluggers littered the bedrooms throughout the house, mingling with dirty laundry and boxes of opened Christmas gifts (I gave Sam my dad's Boston College '36 ring). At a neighborhood New Year's party, Cheryl, a mother of five from across the street, told me, "I see Sam through the window at night, swinging his baseball bat."

Something else I was going to miss.

I like the chaos of young people home from college—even the noise at 2:30 in the morning when somebody gets up off the sofa, decides to make a baloney sandwich, and yells, "Hey, who wants a sandwich?" Bringing the dorm life to our home, they stay up till 3 A.M., watching reruns of Sex and the City, then sleep till after noon. In 1973, when I was a sophomore at college, I came home for a weekend, went to bed Friday night, and slept until 2 o'clock the next afternoon. When I came down the stairs, my dad, sitting in his brown chair, said, "I guess you were tired. It's two in the afternoon." I was stunned.

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