The visit
Illustration by Johnnie Watkins.
Dylan Hostetter, Executive Editor
I have to admit I’m not the most homesick person. It’s not that I don’t miss home, I’m just so busy here with school I don’t get there often. I honestly don’t remember the last time I got home — I guess that’s why my parents came to visit.
Don’t get me wrong, I love them more than anything; but they can be a little strange. First of all, they hardly spend time in the city, so it takes them a while to get acclimated. Once I caught my dad staring at a wall of graffiti like it was hieroglyphics.
He asked me what “ACAB” meant, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “All Cars Are Busted.” Based on the dings, scratches and poor park-jobs all around the city, he believed it.
My mom is just as bad, if not worse. She’s lived in the same small town for her entire life. She’s never been out of the country, never been on an airplane, never seen someone relieving themselves in an alleyway, etc.
She gets a real kick out of the city when she visits me at school. The people around campus are a lot different than where she is from, too. The face she made when she first saw a girl with a septum piercing was the same face you would make if you were about to kill a giant cockroach.
In comparison, the face she made when she first saw a guy with a septum piercing was the same face you would make if a giant cockroach were about to kill you.
It had been a while since my parents had visited me on campus, so I forgot how obnoxious they could be. For example, my mother takes school spirit to the next level. Don’t get me wrong, I like going to VCU, but it’s a public university in Virginia — not Harvard or Oxford. There’s an appropriate amount of excitement to have.
But every time she shows up here, she’s fully decked out in VCU garb. She has her “VCU MOM” T-shirt, the most obnoxious fake foam horns stuck to her head and an attitude that says, “My son is the most special person in the whole wide world.” It’s embarrassing.
Speaking of embarrassing, she has my father follow us around with his camera like he’s our own personal photographer. Every time I turn around he’s taking a picture of a plate of food, a neat tree or even just another student he thinks looks “cool.” He’s been mistaken for VCUfits at least a half-dozen times.
I’m not faking a smile every time they ask me a question I don’t want to answer, like “Have you been applying for jobs?” “When are you moving back home?” or even “Why doesn’t everyone just buy new jeans if theirs have so many holes in them?” I really love it. I love the questions. I love when they don’t stop asking them the entire time they’re here. It’s not infuriating in the slightest.
It is always a bit bittersweet when it’s time for them to go back home, though. My parents love me, and I know it — mainly because they like to say it to me very loudly and very often, especially if there is a large crowd of people nearby.
As my parents drove away, I raised my hand to wave at them and my dad leaned out of the driver’s window to take one last picture of me. That was when the car veered off the road and into a fire hydrant.
I ran to the car to find my mom sitting in the passenger seat, rattled. Her foam ram horns were all twisted on her head. My dad was still holding the camera in his hands, and managed to muster a smirk.
“ACAB,” he said, as I let out a long, deep sigh.
Editor’s Note: The characters and events depicted in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
