for the second time in our careers as parents, bernie and i had to stop and console a genuinely distraught child.
wait.
that sentence needs some specificity.
this was not the second time we consoled one of our children.
that would mean i was lying.
or eternally ignoring my children.
either way, no good.
clarification.
for some reason i can't trace back in the conversation, while i was helping Benny get into his jammies after bath-time, he asked something like, "when do people have to move out?"
i asked what he meant, and he specified that he wanted to know how old people were when they usually moved out of the house.
i told benny that his mommy and daddy both moved out of their parents' houses when they were 18 and went to live at college.
benny literally burst into tears.
i tried to explain that it is all very (mostly) fun and you get to live with a bunch of friends (or at least good roommates) and visit your family when you want to (admit you're out of socks.)
(the parentheticals were occurring in my brain, not out loud.)
this, for some reason, made him cry harder.
so, i told him that we would let him make this decision when he was 17 or 18.
nope.
didn't help.
still weeping.
at this point, i just scooped him up and carried him downstairs.
i needed reinforcements.
so, bernie also joined the conversation, and we all eventually agreed that we could revisit this if he changed his mind.
but that he could totally live with us.
(i may have used the phrase, "let's always live close to each other," so i felt less like a liar.)
benny specified that he would like to live with us until he is 99.
i'm fairly certain our little man will change his mind at some point in his teenage years.
for now, i kind of have to wonder why two children of parents who have both been Residence Life professionals at some point in their careers are so averse to living on campus.
perhaps they were listening a little more closely to all those late-night calls than we realized.
oops.
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