The Burden of Being a College Kid Home Again

So here I am writing my dad’s column for him again, while he’s off on vacation.

“Where you going, Dad?” I asked him.

“I’m getting my head feng-shuied,” he said, which I guess is that ancient Chinese art of arranging the male brain so as to bring you good luck, sort of like with furniture and stuff.

“While you’re at it, get a haircut,” my mom told him, and he climbed in the minivan and headed up the I-5 with my spoiled little brother.

Before he left, my dad yelled at me and my brother for leaving all sorts of junk in the car and basically treating it like our own personal Dumpster.

Dad says 30% of a person’s life is spent putting things where they belong and throwing out candy wrappers.

According to him, there are basically only two types of people: those who throw things away and those who don’t.

“Which type are we, Daddy?” my dopey little sister asked.

“Guess,” he said.

“The good kind?” she asked.

“It’s a minivan, not a garbage dump,” my dad scolded us.

“Why can’t it be both, Dad?” I said, which made my little sister giggle.

See, I took freshman-level philosophy last semester and they teach you to question things, like about life and stuff. Believe me, you have to be philosophical when you’re a teenager living with your parents.

“Don’t be a wise guy,” my dad said when I questioned him about the minivan.

“I’m a girl, Dad. Remember?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said, and climbed into his minivan and took off.

My dad, he’s the only person I know who lives vicariously through himself. You’re supposed to live vicariously through other people, right? Not him. My mom says all men are really little boys and they don’t change much after age 2. Or 12. I forget which.

“You’re never too old to be immature,” my dad is always saying, which is something he picked up from one of his mouthy friends, I think.

“Mom, that’s so scary,” I tell her.

“Yeah, just wait 20 years,” she says.

My dad’s actually going on this river-rafting trip that he was talked into by his friend Bill. Dad says that’s another reason not to have too many lawyer friends, on account of they’re always talking you into things you would totally never do.

“Hey, De Soto, have a nice trip!” I told him when he pulled out of the driveway.

I think Hernando De Soto is the dude who explored the Mississippi River. That’s the guy, right? All I can say is that I sure hope my dad discovers a river. Any river. Even a creek.

“He could use his own waterway,” I tell my mom.

“He could use something,” my mom says.

I like it when my mom’s sarcastic. It reminds me of my friends back at college, whom I really miss.

My friends, they say that after you’ve been away at college, it’s really hard to live at home again, because you have to retrain your parents about what teenagers are like and stuff. I’m finding out that’s totally true. As parents get older, they’re harder to train. Some won’t listen at all.

Like, my mom keeps trying to give me curfews. Curfews! Can you believe curfews? I’ve been away at college for a whole entire year, and she’s giving me curfews?

“I want you home by 1,” she says almost every night.

“Mom, this is L.A.,” I always tell her.

“You’re right,” she says. “Make it midnight.”

Midnight? A lot of the good clubs, they don’t even open till midnight. Not that I’d ever go to a club or anything. My dad, he’d kill me if I ever went to some nightclub.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he says every time I leave the house at night.

“That’s pretty limiting, Dad,” I say.

“Don’t be a wise guy either,” he says and goes back to his Fortune magazine.

Jeeesh.

But a lot of good stuff has happened since I came home from college, too. Last week, I joined the Columbia House DVD Club, and I got, like, four free DVDs without paying a cent. It’s the best deal in history if you ask me, which you probably wouldn’t.

My dad says I’ll be paying for those four DVDs my whole life, and after that, my heirs will be paying for those four DVDs.

“For 80 years, you’ll be sending little cards to Terre Haute, Ind.” he says.

“So?” I say.

“Every month,” he says, “for 80 years.”

“So?” I say.

See, that college philosophy stuff really paid off.

Then my dad starts griping about the price of organic milk and how the cost of stamps is going up again and how come there are three opened packages of lunch meat in the refrigerator. Big deal, three. I have to tell you, being a dad today sure must be exciting.

“Organic milk?” he says. “Why do we even need organic milk?”

“So you’ll grow up to be healthy and strong,” my mom teases him.

“I’m already healthy and strong,” he says.

“So I’ve noticed,” she says, then kisses him on his hairy, middle-aged neck, like he’s a Greek fisherman or something.

Jeeesh. Is it like this for everyone when they come home from college? Give me dorm food any day. Give me sarcasm.

My dad says that since I went away to college, I’ve really changed. He says I’m like this female Holden Caulfield character, except with more of an attitude.

“Who?” I said, just to bug him.

“Holden Caulfield,” he said.

“The inventor of organic milk?” I say.

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” he says.

Jeeesh.

Is it September yet?

Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.