Riot of Passage (Sorry, Dad)

There’s nothing like the first day of school. When I was a child, my parents would walk me to my new classroom each year to help me get settled. It was a fun tradition, one that made me feel comforted and loved. The problem, however, is that the hand-holding never really stopped.

I guess my parents did lay off during my junior high and high school years. But when I started college at Brigham Young University in 1995, they went right back into kindergarten mode. They drove up with me from Arizona, helped me move into my dorm, and then waved goodbye to the other parents who – politely and appropriately – left their children behind.

My parents just stayed. Did you know that, before they were demolished, Deseret Towers used to have rooms that they would rent out to campus visitors? My parents stayed in the dorms – my dorm – for days, wallowing in nostalgia and self-pity. As any selfish teenager would do, I stayed busy and pretended not to know them. That got a little trickier when my dad insisted on attending my first day of classes with me.

My dad’s really not the type of person who blends into a crowd. There he was, 6-feet, 5-inches tall, 44 years old, wearing a fanny pack (his must-have traveling accessory), sitting on the front row of the lecture hall with his mortified freshman daughter. He had a hard time staying quiet, too, “whispering” commentary during Biology 130 and “softly” correcting my religion teacher’s explanation of the Greek symbol the caduceus. (Yes, 13 years later, I remember the details. It was that traumatic.)

In fairness to him, I was his oldest child. And I was moving more than 300 miles away. Did he sense, back then, that his family was never going to be the same? That I would marry a Provo boy who, try as he might, simply couldn’t cut the apron strings (to his snowmobile!) and planned to live in Utah forever? That I was never coming back?

One of my dad’s favorite sayings is: “You can’t escape genetics.” Now that I have children of my own, I see my first day of college in a more sympathetic light. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to my baby. In fact, I won’t.

I truly plan to get a PhD before my oldest starts college so that – should he choose to study anywhere outside of Utah County – I can simply go with him. Maybe I’ll even teach one of his classes. Because the only thing more horrifying on your first day of college than your dad wearing a fanny pack and sitting on the front row is this: Your mom wearing a Britney Spears T-shirt, standing at the lectern.

-- Elyssa Andrus

A shortened version of this column appeared in the Daily Herald on page B1 on Aug. 27. Reprinted with permission.