I sat across the table from her, a friend that I don't talk to very much. One of those. I wondered why she had invited me to dinner- I'm not that much fun when I eat, really. I'm an intense eater: I focus on my food, chew everything until it's mush, and take forever to finish. It took me about an hour to finish eating a salad and a small plate of something Chartwell's, the food provider at the school's cafeteria, dreamed up that resembled nothing edible I had seen before. It looked like vegetable confetti sprinkled with chicken. Tasted like confetti, too. And I paid seven dollars for that.
We talked about shallow things, which usually makes me uncomfortable. It's not that I am so deep and brooding that the pressing issues of the world just can't go undiscussed, but I like to let conversation flow freely with as little censorship as possible. But I didn't know two of the girls there tonight very well. So I kept it simple and stuck to making stupid comments about even sillier things. For example, everyone laughed to my reaction to a friend saying, "I just swallowed a bean whole." Riveting.
Things got deepest and most personal when my friend asked me where I was living now. Of course I would have loved to say, "In this cozy little one-bedroom tucked back in the woods with a fabulous kitchen and great big windows that let all the sunshine in," but as a compulsive purveyor of the truth, good or bad, I said, "With my mother."
Even from across that great, round table, I could see the cringe in her face. "Ooh."
She didn't have to say more, but what I didn't have to say was, "At least I'm allowed to drink in my 'housing' and my bathroom is all my own."
And I'm glad I didn't. Is there really anything better about either living on campus or with your parents? It seems to me that the two are just about equal-- you have to follow rules (or at least some guidelines).
But the more I think the more I don't mind living back at home, at least not for now. I'm not throwing money I don't have away to live in a shitty apartment. I get to throw my scarce money away on nights out and plane tickets And I'm definitely not giving any more of it to Chartwell's for a seven-dollar salad I put together myself.
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When Jason Mosley visited last week, he and I were talking about how smart some folks are for living with their parents. No debt. Savings accounts. Food. Laundry. Also, last I checked, dorm life was anything but glamorous. (I had a roommate who threw up in a bucket a lot.) And for seven dollars, you can make a salad at home with produce from those local farmers Jason was talking about. You'll have a lot of change left over. Which you can save. In a savings account. Because you won't be broke like all those other people who think it's status-y not to live at home. So there.
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