Max goes to college

Posted by Marc Hodak on August 20, 2007 under Futurama | Comments are off for this article

In three months, Max has gone from lofty, cum laude senior to lowly frosh having to prove himself all over again. Today we make the eight-hour drive down to his new school. We’d have flown him down, but he’s got the accumulated STUFF of a post-industrial teen who happens to be both very athletic and crazy-smart with computing technology. Also, he’s going away! By driving him down, I get a couple more days with him.

Many years ago, when the big guy was much smaller and more daddy-centered, and our worlds largely overlapped, the thought of this day would have inspired dread. Now that it’s time to cut him loose, and for us to become visitors in each other’s separate worlds, it’s not as bad as I thought. First of all, it’s not exactly a cold-turkey split. Max weaned us with a stint at boarding school these last couple of years. His school was only an hour away, so this still feels like a big step, but not nearly as big as “now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t.” Second, communications have changed a lot since the time of mini-Max; every kid now has a cell phone and Al Gore has invented the Internets!

I’ll try to set a good example while I still have some parental influence, and not use my phone while driving.

Update: Eight hours turned out to be wishful thinking. Traffic was thick, even without the expected rains. Thank goodness, we’ll only have to move his STUFF once in these next four years. At least the Internet is working down here.