A Life Changing Experience...

University – it’s a life-changing experience they say. What they don’t tell you is how quickly that happens.

We’ve just exported No 1 Daughter to Dundee where she’s going to learn how to be a brain surgeon. No, really, she is. I think her other choice was rocket scientist...

Now she’s always been a sensible kid, pretty down to earth and capable of looking after herself, but this is a bit different.

Our baby – and she’ll hate me saying that , so it’s worth repeating – is leaving home for the first time and disappearing not only to another town, but to another country. And not the one 50 miles to the west, the one hundreds of miles to the north. Somewhere near the Arctic Circle.

She couldn’t have gone much further if she’d tried and her other choice was Brighton, which isn’t exactly close, either.

So we loaded up those items of her worldly possessions that would fit in our pretty robust and spacious four-by-four (ie: not half enough) and with a stoic Mum providing added support, headed for bonny Scotland. And there, we delivered one precious daughter to her digs. Our young adult ‘little one’. Home. Alone.

Perhaps surprisingly from No 1 Daughter, who sometimes gives the impression that she’s way too strong and cynical for that kind of nonsense, there were real tears when it came time for us to leave.

 And the more she cried, the more anxious her Mum became. But at times like that, you have to ‘Big Up’ and ‘Be Dad’ so it at least looks like you’re still nominally head of the house despite all the evidence to the contrary. We had to go.

Two minutes down the road, Mum wanted to phone to see if No 1 Daughter was ok. Stern Dad had a plan. Leave it two hours, I said. That way, we’ll be too far gone to turn round and she’ll get a chance to settle in.

We abandoned the kid and drove south with the sound of our baby’s fitful sobbing ringing in our ears. Cruel Mum. Heartless Dad.

All right, it wasn’t that bad, but you get the point.

The clock ticked by to one hour, 59 minutes and a few seconds. Cruel Mum is on the phone. Poor Baby. Is it really awful?

“Sorry, speak up” says poor Baby. “I’m in the uni bar. I’ve met four new friends already and we’re drinking shots... They’re dead cheap... It’s great...”

Apparently it was great until gone three in the morning. It was Saturday night, after all. For the teenager, the action was just as it would normally be. Only the venue was different.

No such fun for Miserable Mum and Disheartened Dad. For us it was a long trip home, the first of many ‘oldies’ nights in and one daughter fewer in a significantly quieter house. So that’s what they mean by a university being a life-changing experience. It’s not theirs, though. It’s ours...