Preparing for the Yearly Migration

In only a few weeks, the IU students will begin their annual migration back to town and swelling our population by a mere 30,000. Streets are crowded. Parking places disappear and the inventory at the local Target, Bed Bath and Beyond and other student-frequented stores swells to keep up with the additional bodies. Its not uncommon to see microwaves and dorm-sized refrigerators stacked to the ceilings at Kroger, lines in cell-phone stores out the doors and parents totally bewildered by the thousands of items their kiddy-widdy winkeys have to have to successfully complete at four years of school with a college degree.

The foreign students have it really hard. They have a difficult time learning "Southern Indiana" for words like "warshing your clothes,"" squarshing a bug" or having Chinese "carry out", rather than "take away." Asian students have told me that ordering at the local golden arches is particularly stressful. "Do you want fries with that?" just doesn't fit nicely into their hand held translators.

So as the last few weeks of summer continue on, we "locals" are starting to prepare--eating at all our favorite restaurants, parking in as many slots as we can find and enjoying all the strained and painful looks on the freshmen parent faces.