Graduation Day

Tomorrow is graduation day for high school seniors. A great day for the kids and bittersweet for the parents. If their kids aren't going to college their parents are worried about what will become of them over the next few years as they figure out how to make it in the world, while those with kids going to college can put aside those particular worries for the time being and worry about how they are going to eat without anybody reminding them they have to.

This summer is not starting off auspiciously for us. My son has decided he didn't want to return to his old summer camp job, and instead will bum around. He's thinking "this is the last summer of my life" and it's driving me crazy. I'm convinced he simply cannot conceive of how much money he is going to need living away from home. I have warned him more than makes anybody happy how he is to not call me for cash while in college. This is me, throwing him out on his ass and trying to make him become semi-responsible. I'm not sure that he gets how much printer ink and college textbooks cost.

To be fair, he has followed up on three job leads but they have been disappointing. The worst disappoinment has been not getting one sure thing because he is not yet 18. While most of his friends have reached this milestone he has a few more months to go being a minor. He has also NOT followed up on some job leads, which has started a new phase of family disputes. At least the "clean your room" argument, which is more boring than effective, now has an alternating song and dance number.

I've been asking around for any leads, and this week a friend of mine hooked him up with a neighbor architecture professor whose husband recently passed away, leaving her 1,000 books to dispose of. This is after she absorbed 1,000 books into her library and donated 1,000 more. The task was to cart said books to The Strand, and they would split the proceeds. We had no idea how lucrative this may be, but it had the side benefit of helping a person in need, so there was no down side. That is, until he arrived at The Strand with the first cart load of books to be told that they won't buy them unless he was 18! Huh? So Ms. Professor biked over to the store and, in the words of my son, "used her Yale power" on them until they agreed to let him sell the books.

The proceeds for the first load came to over $300, but my son refused to take half, thinking that anything more than $100 for 3 hours work was a rip off (and even that was an unexpected windfall) and he couldn't take any more from a recent widow. So in the end, it turns out that he is a pretty nice kid, even if I never have the chance to witness it myself, and I only get the story in misspelled text messages.