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Monday, August 14, 2006

Packin’ up

We’re off for a few days to deposit Nick at college.  When he was a freshman, he and I did the traditional father-son knife fight.  When he was a sophomore, we bundled him into his new dorm with terrifying efficiency, and I vowed that this year, “we’re going to drop off Nick and drive back in one day, slowing down to 30 mph as we approach his dorm and throwing him out of the passenger side with a sleeping bag as he does a drop-and-roll.” Wish us luck!  Except that we’re not going to approach his dorm, because he’s not living in one.  Yes, that’s right, now that he’s a junior, Nick is living in an apartment for the first time.  Feel free to stop by and offer him apartment-cleaning tips at any point during the school year!  I know he’ll appreciate it.

People often ask if I give Nick any fatherly advice when we drop him off at college.  Well, actually no they don’t ask that.  But I do need a segue to the folk tale with which I will leave you all until we return.

“Nick,” I told him two years ago, “whatever else you do in college, watch out for right-wing attack dogs.  You mustn’t take them home, not even if they follow you down the street and beg for food.  Remember the story of what happened to the ‘liberal’ journalist in the PC wars:  one day in 1991 he came across a right-wing attack dog who was nosing around the dumpsters in the back of the offices of the Dartmouth Review, barking about all this crazy deconstruction and radical feminism that leftist professors were foisting on unsuspecting American undergraduates.  ‘Gee, I hate deconstruction and radical feminism too,’ thought the liberal journalist.  ‘This right-wing attack dog doesn’t seem so bad.’ So he brought the dog home, gave him a big, ten-thousand-word spread in the Atlantic Monthly, a regular spot on a half-hour cable opinion show, and a plate of leftover steak scraps.  ‘I’ll call him “Fluffy,”’ said the liberal journalist.  But imagine the journalist’s surprise a decade later, when his dog Fluffy began barking that liberal journalists were ‘traitors’ and ‘soft on terrorists who want to destroy America’!  ‘But I fed you and gave you a home,’ said the liberal journalist, mortally wounded.  ‘I took care of you.  I even got your picture on the cover of that national newsmagazine.’

“‘Yes, you did all that,’ replied Fluffy.  ‘But what did you expect?  You knew I was a right-wing attack dog.’”

Nick listened very carefully.  He’s a good kid.

Posted by Michael on 08/14 at 06:00 AM
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