Up is down, and down is up. You heard it here first.
In case you missed the article in the Minneapolis paper a week or so ago, here’s how I know. A private college in St. Paul is going to start offering laundry service to its students next year, and I’m not talking about rusty coin-operated washing machines in the dorms. Nope. Actual laundry service. According to the article, this perk will be provided “for a fee” so that students can spend more time doing the things they really want to do and make better use of the time they have. Young men and women will no longer have to scrounge for quarters or trouble themselves with tedious tasks like washing their own clothes.
But here’s the best part. Get ready. According to the story, it was parents, not students, who requested that such a service be made available.That’s right.There is some parallel universe where parents request things like laundry service. What’s next? Butlers and nightly bed turn down service? Mints on pillows? Parking valets? Give me a major break. When did parents start coddling this generation of perfectly capable young people to such a degree, and why are they doing it? I don’t get it.
A generation ago, kids graduated from high school and went to college.Their parents let them call home collect once a week. At Thanksgiving time, after months away and a Greyhound bus ride home, they were already being transformed. It wasn’t easy, but they learned how to be adults by taking their lumps, making some really bad decisions, and even wearing strangely colored underwear until they figured their lives (and laundry) out.
Learning how to be an adult was a class with no book back then. It was the most important “class” we took. We passed without our parents calling the school to see if we were going to class. We passed without private rooms. We passed without laundry service, too. Somehow, we made it.
If the parents of this generation would back off, these kids would, too.
Bright pink undies and all.
The Loon Whisperer 