Orientation

I saw all the NYU freshman waiting with their parents outside the dorms today, taking their turns moving in. Pallets full of bedding, bottled water, and crates of sweaters to be worn in the anticipated winter. Today, though, it was hot, and the flurry of activity outside the 15 story dormitory on 3^rd and 11^th was placed into an appropriate though unnoticed context by the Howl festival taking place a few blocks away in Tompkins Square Park. All those parents dropping their 17 and 18-year-old daughters and sons to live next to one another in the belly of the beast, the East Village. Nuts. All of them. I don’t know how much I can blame the parents for their ignorance, but they’ll realize what they’ve done when their fresh-faced, Midwestern boys and girls come home from Christmas with a mild pot habit and an unexplained prescription for penicillin from the university clinic.