Follow Me
Written by Brett, Posted in General & Random
Yes! The New York Times continues to satisfy the Gay Uncle’s insatiable appetite for stories about “loving” parents who steadfastly refuse to have any life of their own. You may remember his ridiculing of the gray piggy’s summer camp coverage earlier this season (or, at least, the headline concerning that topic). Now, he’s rejoicing in the fact that they’ve apparently written an article about parents following their children to college. It used to be that, when the youth were finally old enough to leave the warm, guano-filled nest, those lucky enough to be able to afford it were allowed to go away to college, where they would commit plagiarism, continue picking on people unlike them, and experiment with being into rugby or not really from Long Island (“I was born in Manhattan”). Now, all that is apparently over. Now, according to the Times–the most reputable source of trends in the world–when the kids age up and head to Madison, or Burlington, or Kalamazoo, their folks simply purchase a condo nearby, and tail them. There are two things that Gunc finds weird about this. 1) That the kids tolerate this (his theory: 2/3 of them are actually still nursing). And 2) That the parents feel like they can get away with acting as if it’s perfectly natural for them to purchase a second home in South Bend, Indiana, like they’d been looking exactly there for years. (There’s a Middle Eastern restaurant! And a Target! And it’s only an eighteen hour drive from our normal house!) G.U. understands that parents and kids are all BFFs now, and there’s none of that rebellious teen “anger” that existed in the past. But still, isn’t this idea kind of…smothering? He supposes that, given the cost of housing, and the crumbling economy, about four-fifths of these kids will end up living at home right after college anyway, so maybe the idea of having a condo in their university town is a better option than moving back to a basement in Bergen County. But, is there no such thing as adulthood anymore? Will these kids be expected to remain under their parents’ soft, smothery boobies until they have kids? At which point, what will they become? What will all of them become?
