It’s November and he’s only called to ask for money once. And that was recently. And he needed money to do laundry (!) and his debit card wasn’t working.

He’s been home twice. Once, because there was a hurricane/tropical storm threat that evacuated the dorms for a long weekend. The second time was Fall Break. He arrived in two-day-old clothes and toting his entire wardrobe — dirty. He did all his own laundry, of course, but it’s much cheaper to do it at Mom and Dad’s house.

To my delight, he calls pretty often. We don’t call him that often. Sometimes, we chat via IM late at night when we discover we’re both on. We IM’d our way through election night (that boy is just FULL of conspiracy theories when it comes to politics).

He got his first round of grades and he’s doing well.

We’ve been to visit him once. We’d go more often if it were closer, I think. We’d also go more often if we weren’t doing a million other things that prevent it on the weekend.

He’ll be home for Thanksgiving and I am looking forward to that.

Do you remember your first semester of college? How did you do? How often did you come home? Were you homesick or did you run off and never look back?

Last weekend we went to visit the boy at Christopher Newport University. It was the first time for us to visit him  as a family since he’d been installed in his dorm room as a college freshman. He called before our visit and asked us to bring a few things: a sewing kit (for ripped clothes and missing buttons, apparently), some jeans and his girlfriend.

So the four of us, the husband, the girl, the allergist’s daughter and I headed out on Saturday morning and descended upon his dorm. We were appropriately aghast at the disgustingness of a suite shared by four teenage boys, but it was obvious there had been some effort to clean, so we didn’t mention it.

In the dorm room hall, on a bulletin board was a list of Abreves. that is, abbreviations for the inner language of the dorm or perhaps the college or perhaps kids of that age. Who knows? Words shortened like, “obvi” for obvious and “Space” for MySpace. We stood there, all five of us, reading the list, when the girl, scanning down the list obviously much faster than the rest of us asked, “What’s a ______?”

Now, I’m not a prude by any stretch, and have uttered my share of obscene words, but not in public, not outside of the company of very close adult friends and not as a habit. But the word she said is THE WORD I WILL NOT SAY. It is, in my opinion, one of the most obscene words in the English language. She was completely innocent and followed our stunned laughter and redirecting, “Never mind!” with, “But what does it MEAN?”

I said, “My EARS, they’re BURNING,” as we steered her away from the bulletin board, down the stairs and out of the building. No mother should have to hear that word coming out of her 12-year-old daughter’s mouth.

The boy was mortified and apologized on behalf of his entire generation, his college, his dorm and his floor.

The allergist’s daughter, a worldly college kid,  whisked the girl away and gave her this explanation: There are dirty words in this world, but there are LEVELS of dirty words. There’s the D word, which is bad, and then the S word which is a level worse, but THIS word is SEVERAL LEVELS worse. We do not say this word.

I’m hoping that her memory has already faded. I’m hoping that a new term does not become popular at her middle school. I’m hoping my ears stop burning and I’ll forget the whole incident.

What? Whoa! Time travel? No. Recalibration. We have two extra days before the boy goes to college. His room and roommate assignment arrived in the mail and his move-in date and time are very specifically scheduled. Borrowed time friends, borrowed time.

Last night, before the roommate assignment arrived in today’s mail, the boy was friended by his new roomie in Facebook. Oh, how I love Facebook. I know, I’m not allowed to because, dude, I’m old and all that.

The boy said how he’s now seen 300 photos of his soon-to-be roommate which, out of context, seems weird. On the flip side, he reviewed his own profile from the perspective of the new roomie and observed photos of himself playing trombone, playing board games and has decided that future roomie is thinking, “Great. My roommate is a geek.”

I spun the wheel my freshman year of college and got Jenny, the tuba player, German student and rabid parrothead. I got lucky.

What was your freshman college roommate like? Did you spin the wheel, or go with someone you already knew?