Doing our Duty

The house is only three miles from the campus.

Arriving in San Diego after a nine-hour drive, we dropped off the bags at the hotel and drove to the house where our student will be renting a room. Some of his roommates were taking summer classes at the U and had already staked their claim to the choicest spaces.

Nevertheless, they seemed quite friendly and showed us to his upstairs bedroom, a 10-foot by 10-foot box enhanced by a high ceiling. It had blue carpet and white walls. A sliding glass window let in a lot of summer light, but its view was the opposite of spectacular with the neighboring house only a few feet away. The room looked clean to these eyes, but the one in our party who has estrogen flowing through her veins declared that it needed to be vacuumed. Our student nodded politely; there is actually a 20% chance that he’ll remember her suggestion in September.

The Ikea in San Diego was only a couple of miles from the hotel, so we pressed on with our mission. Ikea furniture is well-designed and inexpensive; the downside is its lack of durability, and assembly can be difficult. Students are the perfect target market, because they have a lot of time (to assemble and re-assemble the furniture, and I speak from personal experience) but little money, and they need to have the goods last only a few years. Our student picked out his mattress, frame, and cover. We obtained his table and chair at Costco, which was in the same complex (a value-shoppers’ paradise), and we took everything back to the house. It’s all in boxes, but we’ve done our duty as parents. Et voila!
After a long but successful day we decompressed at an upscale Italian restaurant.