Boyleing Points: Education Vacation
EDUCATION VACATION
Dear Diary – Going to Florida for the weekend. Taking son to visit colleges.
Side note: the idea of Florida colleges was mine. It’s like the gifts I buy – I get stuff I like so if the recipients don’t have any use for ‘em, I’ll get to enjoy them. A few days in sunny Florida before the cold dark days of winter? Sounds like a plan, whether or not my son likes it or not.
The plane is delayed for an hour and a half for who-knows-why. The plane came in late from who-knows-where. We get to the Florida hotel at midnight. But who cares. It’s warm.
The next day we get to campus and the delayed flight is a distant memory. It took an extra couple of hours to get to paradise, so what. As we take the tour, one thing becomes clear: I want to go to college more than my son.
I don’t want to study but I do want to use that gym, that pool, and have my choice of fine dining in a dorm that puts our hotel to shame. The tour guide says the campus has staff that cleans the bathrooms – which, of course, are in each dorm room – not down the hall like back in the day. I start thinking – forget the Rockaway Times. I should take the SAT and run the student newspaper.
The library lends books but they’re like artifacts, they’re so retro. What you really want to do is borrow a GoPro camera, a drone (I’m not kidding!) and an iPad.
The auditorium is a Broadway theater and the campus infirmary has a doctor (maybe two) 24/7. Not on call. There. Just waiting to care for you. Turns out, I should’ve made a visit but more on that later.
We go to a second campus because maybe there’s something better than paradise. But first we stop at a Five Guys for a great burger. Of course, it’s a bit of hardship for students who’d have to walk 100 yards off campus to get there.
The second campus is smaller but offers the same luxuries. It might get the nod because the dorms overlook a scenic river.
We’ve got a third campus to visit the next day across the state. As we’re driving, I start to feel a little discomfort in my lower abdomen, like a stitch. I man up and keep driving.
At the next stop, the college dining room has the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass windows in the world. This is quite impressive but my stomach pain is now more acute and I grimace my way through the tour.
We have an early Sunday morning flight but my son suggests changing the flight to Saturday night because, well, he didn’t really want to hang out with me that much. I pay the extra couple of hundred bucks to change the flight to Saturday evening at 6:15. My pain is fairly steady.
I have plenty of time to contemplate the pain because this flight is delayed for almost FIVE hours.
The delay gives me time to wonder about all the ailments or diseases I might have. And the delay gives me time to look up my symptoms online. I wonder out loud, maybe hoping for some sympathy from my son, maybe I have pancreatitis.
He is not sympathetic: Who are you, Steve Jobs?
Never mind Steve Jobs had pancreatic cancer, not pancreatitis. The point, I guess, he was calling me a hypochondriac and an egomaniac at the same time. Which reminds me of that old inscription on a cemetery tombstone of an accused hypochondriac: Now do you believe me?
Anyway, I will call my doctor when I land but until then I continue research. But you know how it is these days. You can’t just have just a stomach ache; you’ve got to have a cataclysmic disease.
I self-diagnose through the long wait in the airport. Then I see STRESS as a possible cause. Then it dawns on me. I’m not going to college. I’m just paying for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment