Drinking on shoulders of giants

Jim Mullen

I recently visited Thomas Jefferson’s famous self-designed mansion Monticello where he could watch through a spyglass as the buildings he designed for the University of Virginia were going up. Guides take about 20 people at a time through the 10 or so large rooms open to the public and tell about his life and times, his politics, his writing (20,000 letters), his architecture and his wallpaper.

Jefferson was quite the designer and decorator. No doubt he would have loved that TV show “Trading Spaces,” where people come in and redecorate each other’s homes.

He had other talents as well. In the second public room, the guide mentioned that Jefferson had gone to William and Mary, the college in Williamsburg, Va., for two years. In the fourth room, his library, the guide told us that Jefferson was fluent in five languages and could write in two more. A woman behind me was incredulous. “But he only went to college for two years,” she said loudly to her companion.

Did she really think that after four years of college most students know seven languages?

I don’t want to burst her bubble, but the only word a college kid today might possibly know in seven languages after four years in academia is the word “beer.” If they graduate at all, it’s Magna Cum Drunk. Sometimes I wonder how college kids can get so drunk with all those rings piercing their lips and tongues. It must be like trying to drink out of a dribble glass, but where there’s a college, there’s a way.

Of course, that’s a total, complete and unfair generalization — not all college kids drink. Some of them smoke dope.

I, of course, blame the parents. Especially those parents who struggle, save, scrimp, work long hours and worry so they will have enough money to send Junior to college.
What do they think? That after 18 years of them doing everything for him he’s suddenly going to work his butt off and get great grades? That he’ll suddenly appreciate all their sacrifice? Yeah, that could happen. Not.

Yet the financial advisers make it sound like child abuse if you’re not working your fingers to the bone to save money to put your kid through college. They relish telling parents how expensive college will be when their kid turns 18.

“In the year 2015, tuition will be $9,342,000 a year. Will you be ready?” Yes, I will. Because I won’t be paying that tuition. That money will be in my bank account making babies. Why should I send my kid off to Binge Drink U. when he could live off the interest of the tuition we didn’t pay the rest of his life and never have to work?

Maybe, you think, it won’t cost so much after all. Because, lucky for you, there’s a good college right here in town that Junior can attend. Oh, you poor, pathetic, silly twit. Junior wouldn’t be caught dead there. He must go to a much more expensive school 300 miles away, The University of Getting Out of My Parent’s House.

The dorm rooms alone cost more than your first house. Did I say dorm room? What was I thinking? Financial experts now recommend you buy Junior a condo off-campus. So all the learning going on down on the campus won’t distract him, and he can concentrate on picking up girls and drinking “cervezas.”

Now, not only has he already learned how to drink Jell-O shots without getting the front of his shirt dirty and which are the best towns to go to on spring break, he’s almost bilingual.

Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life” and “Baby’s First Tattoo.” You can reach him at jim_mullen@myway.com.