Connections: Should you share your college antics with your kids? I did, and it made me mom of the year
My twin and I went to different colleges. I ended up at Grinnell College in Iowa and she went to Colorado University at Boulder. I visited her on my way home for breaks and she visited me at least once. The break from each other was important in developing our own identities. By junior year, we missed each other a lot and ended up applying to the same program to study abroad. We were roommates during the spring semester in Vienna, Austria and did the same internship together, teaching English at an Austrian high school. My class was a group of 50 15-year old boys. I was 20 but looked about 15 and several of them kept asking me to go for coffee after school (always beware of 15-year old Austrian boys who want to get coffee). It was a challenge to maintain a sense of authority but with the help of my internship mentor, Doris, and headmaster, Herr Grande, I managed, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
During our time in Vienna, my sister begged me to go with her to see Nik Kershaw in concert because she had two tickets and couldn’t find anyone to go last minute after her friend canceled. That night, we ended up traveling with the band to Geneva (an 18-hour trip) and becoming friends with a couple of the crew members, Wob and Chris. They were perfect British Gentlemen on that trip. Yes, we were lucky. Thank goodness we didn’t have social media or Facetime to inform our parents what we were up to.
It was my twin sister’s idea to travel to Geneva with the band and I ended up being talked into that crazy trip. We had actually decided to pretend we were going but not actually go. We told our roommates and they were shocked and, of course, didn’t believe us. We packed our bags, grabbed our passports, and said, “we’re off.” We had planned to go to the bus to say goodbye to them and “hope to see you again someday.” At the very last minute, we hopped on the bus! I remember Monday morning having to call Herr G, a stern, serious man, to tell him we had hopped on a bus with a band and would not be reporting for duty that day. Instead of firing us, yelling, or giving us a stern lecture, he laughed hysterically and told us to have fun. We still keep in touch with Herr G, as we call him. He is now in his 90s. We also kept in touch with Doris, who, sadly, died of pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago.
After Geneva, we went to London at least half a dozen times over the next several months to see our friends. One of those friendships paid off because 30 years later, I won Mom of the Year by surprising my three daughters with red carpet VIP backstage (well, actually we were in the pit with the crew and a few other “celebrity” guests) at a One Direction Concert. My crew member friend that I’d kept in touch with had become the production manager for 1D and I’d kept it a secret till we arrived at the arena. I naively thought that feat of going to extreme lengths to be the coolest mom on the planet would result in my daughters keeping their rooms clean rooms and offering to help me for the next year. That lasted less than a week, but I was still Mom of the Year. This paid off again recently when we saw the Chainsmokers on their latest tour.
So, yes, I shared stories of my wild days with my daughters, who are not embarrassed to take their mother to a concert and think their mom must have been pretty cool at one point (and maybe still is a tiny bit). Two out of the three have made it through college without doing anything nearly as crazy or risky and the youngest one had better not try anything like that, but if she does, I hope it will make her Mother of the Year someday, too.
