By Pam MansellHerald Writer
By Pam Mansell
Herald Writer
Y
OU MAY HAVE noticed this already, but there are some major differences between
boys and girls.
I know, I know you're thinking, this woman is a married mother of two
college-age children, boy and girl, and she's just now figuring this out? No.
Like every other parent, I learned it a long time ago. It's just that recent events in our lives demonstrated yet a new example of that basic truth.
When Jeff was a baby riding along in his stroller, I marveled at the way he'd turn his head to follow the sounds of car and truck engines. Cate couldn't
have cared less; she preferred her cuddly stuffed animals.
Later, when they shared toys as toddlers, Cate would borrow Jeff's trucks
and cars as vehicles for her dolls, or to park outside her play house. For Jeff, unless a doll could make a ``vroom vroom'' noise as he ran it around the living room, it had no use at all.
Then there was shopping when they were teen-agers. Jeff's idea of working
on a school wardrobe was making sure he still had enough jeans to wear, and
gathering up the T-shirts he'd bought at various rock concerts. Back to school shopping with Cate meant hitting three different malls and making exploratory
trips through every store before actually deciding what to buy.
You'd think, wouldn't you, that with all this preparation, I would have known that sending Jeff to college was going to be entirely different from our experiences with Cate three years ago.
I think we started sometime in July with Cate, gathering all the things
she'd need by the end of August. I remember that one bed and most of the floor in her bedroom was covered with stuff we'd organized, and there were major decisions on what clothes she'd need, how many shoes she should take, whether
she had enough barrettes, hair bands, hats, belts, and on and on.
Jeff left last Saturday morning. By Thursday evening, all we'd managed to
do was buy two new pairs of jeans and gather a few cardboard boxes for packing. ``Don't you think it might be time to pack?'' I asked about 7 p.m. Thursday, as he was preparing for a date. ``This isn't like getting ready for a
week at band camp, you know.'' You can probably tell I was speaking in one of
those smug, parents-know-everything tones.
``Oh, sure, Mom, right away,'' my easy-going son answered, oblivious to my sarcasm. And he opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of T-shirts, and plopped them in one box. He did the same with underwear, socks, jeans, shorts, and shoes. Then he grabbed hangers of shirts and slacks and draped them over the other clothes, cleared the stuff off his desk into another box, and said, ``OK,
I'm all done.''
It took about 20 minutes total _ just about 5 minutes longer than it took
Jeff to get ready for band camp all those years. So I certainly taught HIM a lesson.
The amazing thing to me was that, when we unpacked his stuff at Wooster two
days later, he hadn't forgotten anything. (Except duct tape, which we had to go
out and buy, and no, I have no idea why a college freshman needs duct tape.)
I have been struggling to find meaning in all this and have so far failed.
My husband Charley tells me it's just that men are better organized than women.
I'm pretty sure he's joking, which is the only reason I'm still speaking to
him.
Pam Mansell covers New Wilmington for The Herald.