(no subject)

[fivecats]

Dan's Backyard: Water Pitcher
May 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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It's just after 7am and the phone rings. Time was when fear would rise up in me, convinced that the call was from someone in Maryland saying something had happened to one of my parents or my brother. Now, though, I know who it is. The Why is still a question, but it's rarely good.

"Hello."

"Hi. I've got it all figured out," says The Boy's confident voice over the phone.

"Fine," I say. It's too early in the morning for all of the previous day's anger to be remembered, so I'm just playing along. "What do you have figured out?"

"School," he says. "How does this sound: film studies!"

"Film studies?" I ask.

See, I majored in film studies at the U of MD back when they actually had a film department. My senior year, when I could actually take any and all of the film studies classes I wanted to, ALL of the film studies professors went off on sabatical and I was left with TV classes. This not only twarted my goal of becomming a Snobby Film Critic, but taught me not to trust institutions of higher education.

Besides, there was one major problem with that major that I'd overlooked.

"There's no job at the end of that degree," I say flatly. From experience. This is something The Boy knows.

"What about 'Director'?" he asks.

I shake my head, a motion I know he can't see, but I can't help myself. After all, he's 19, not 9.

"You'd have to move to Hollywood and hope to find work in the studios, but you'd be a contractor. You wouldn't have a steady job and you wouldn't have health benefits."

"Oh," he says, after the slightest of pauses. "Then I have no idea."

Despite my statement of "Don't make the same mistake that I made when I got my degree and had no job at the end of it", I decide to, patiently, re-explain another part of our long and apparently wasted conversation on the drive down Saturday night. Go to the college's Career Councillor and ask them for help. They'll give you a long checklist of likes and dislikes to score from and give you an idea of some careers you might be suited for. Do this now, during the summer, while you have time and they have the time to take with you. Explain your needs and see what you come up with.

This, apparently, does not sound as earth-shattering as being a Director, however.

"Have you been up all night?" I ask.

Far too awake sounding he says, "No. I just got up."

We hang up.

Bonn calls to me, just barely awake. "What did he want?" she asks, not even asking who it was.

I tell her. Her first response questions his sanity. Her second response questions if he's been up all night.

*sigh*

Really, I do have a life of my own. I've seen some good movies on DVD lately thanks to NetFlix, read several good books on CD while driving or making bangles and I've posted lots of pictures up to my flickr account. We've done other things apart from dealing with The Boy's incessant neediness. It just doesn't seem that way.

Probably time to change all that.

...