I've been home for about a month now, and I'd be lying if I said that I don't miss my one bedroom home away from home. While it's true many of us love coming home for short doses, living at home after being away for eight months is a whole different ball game. At first, you'll love it! You have easier access to food, now that you're not living on Ramen, I mean a college budget. You have more time for leisure to sit in the basement and write articles for Odyssey. You get to see your friends that you may have not seen since high school. It's all fun and games until about month in. That's when you'll start to notice the things you were able to do when you were away.
1. The "Are you hungry?" trick.
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At school, ramen noodles and student discounts at restaurants are your best friends! You get to decide what you put in your body, and you can save up enough money for your Friday night shenanigans. When you first enter your home for the break, your guardian will offer to feed you anything you want! Slowly you will start loving the fact that you don't make your own food anymore and become extremely dependent on your parent. You regress back to your childhood, while Le Padre whips up some delicious homemade ice cream and mouth watering pancakes. That's where they get you! They want you to be dependent. Now that you've lost your thrifty cooking skills, you will soon have to work around the parental units to be fed and schedule your whereabouts.
2. The nightlife interrogation.
When you're in school, you have the freedom to create your own social schedule. You allow yourself to go out as late as you want and where you want. Now you are home and your protective parents, while they mean well, can be overbearing. After eating dinner made by my lovely mother, I'll tell her that I'm going out with my friends. That's when it begins. *insert dramatic theme music here* Remember the way your parents screened all of your friends when you were younger? You'd think now that you're older and somewhat wiser, that would stop. You're wrong. "How come I've never met this person?" "Show me a picture." "Where did they go to school?" "What do their parents do?" That last question gets me the most, because naturally the job their father has determines whether that person is good enough to go the bar with me. Don't worry Ma, it's just a drink, I'm not tying any knots with them! Finally, when you get the 'rents to "allow" you to be friends with the "lowlife with the father in carpentry," they begin to question your timing: "What time will you be back? That's too late!"
3. The room game.
Your dorm room is yours and yours alone. You have a corner and pile for everything! You've created a map for where everything goes and have the liberty to keep it as clean as you feel. But now, "You live under my roof! Clean your room now!" Naturally there's an argument because you feel like you own this room and think you're entitled to being as messy as you want! "It's my room!" you cry, but within 10 minutes of you claiming your territory, you now have to clean your room, and somehow got roped into cleaning all of the rooms in the house. Touché mom, touché.
4. The control of sleep cycles.
On a lazy Sunday, everyone wants to sleep in as late as we can. And as fate would have it, you don't get to. Someone, perhaps the person you call mommy, barges into your room, rips off your blanket, or even better, dumps cold water on you. She demands that you get up and be productive. When you were living in your dorm you could sleep or not sleep as long as you please. Why, mom, are you waking me up at seven o'clock?! What kind of torture is this? You tell her that there's nothing on your to-do list because you had been productive all week. God forbid I sleep in until 11 a.m. Now you're awake at seven in the morning, cold, wet and staring at the ceiling contemplating all of your life choices.
5. The "You’ll amount to nothing" speech.
Following the literally rude awakening, it's time to discuss your self worth. "What are you even going to do with your life? I'm paying for you college education for what?" When you're in school, you are taking classes to accomplish your degree education. You don't have time to think about the entirety of your future. School is the goal for now, getting your degree is the objective. Your parents start to loudly tell you that you'll amount to nothing if you continue the way you are going. Somehow, the conversation turns into a "Let's talk about everything that you do wrong" roast. Suddenly everything you do is a reason to why you'll never amount to anything. You slowly head toward the corner of the room, crouch, don't cry and then cry.
7. The guilt trip.
After spending all of the time with your family, it's understandable that you would need a break. Right? Wrong. Just because you would like one night to get silly with your friends, you're a horrible child. Why would you trade another night of "Jeopardy!" for my friends when I can celebrate my youth? One of your parents, usually the more nurturing one, will say something like, "You don't like spending time with your family?" or my favorite, "What? You're too good for your family now?" How do you argue that? Now you decide do you go and risk hearing how you apparently hate your family and don't respect them or stay home and watch the seemingly endless "Jeopardy!" marathon.
8. The "I love you" speech.
Of course staying home is not all bad. You have a day of family outings and remember why you love them so much. The night is ending and you all gather in a room to relax and talk. Your parents will spontaneously hug you and remind you that no matter what, they love you. You'll always be their baby. There's something heartwarming about unconditional love. It reminds me that no matter how annoying my parents seem, they are family. They've provided me with this great experience of a college education and a roof over my head. Thank you parents everywhere for loving us ungrateful children. Someday we'll realize just how much you do for us.
