Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
September 21, 2006

Frilly Bedroom Proves You Can Never Really Go Home Again

Journal Entry:  October 2, 1987 (age 18)

The transition to college life has been exciting, but tough.  I headed to SUNY Oswego in August, leaving behind the daily example, advice, and help of my parents.  We butted heads during my senior year of high school, but I’m already starting to see that I was taking them for granted – especially on laundry day.

Today I made my first trip back home to Binghamton.  I had been looking forward to coming home almost since the day I left it.  I’d have dinner with Mom and Dad, go out with my buds, and sleep in my own room.  At Oswego, I am one of the unlucky freshmen who is “tripled,” which means I share a tiny dorm room with two other students.  My roomies, Danny and Ralph, are both good guys, but I miss having some privacy and a quiet place to read and sleep.

So after the welcome home hugs in the foyer of our house, I made a bee line for the sanctuary of my bedroom.  As the door swung open, so did my jaw.  Where was my room?  This certainly wasn’t it.  The beige walls were now…gulp…pink?!  My blue-and-green comforter and sheets had been replaced by a country quilt with little duckies and piggies on it.  The rock posters and school awards that had been on the walls had been replaced with dried flowers and needlepoint pictures of Holly Hobbie.  My boyhood refuge had been the victim of coerced gender reassignment.

Mom had followed me into the room and stood behind me with an anxious smile.  As I turned to her, I could barely get any words out.  “Mom…I…but…how could you?”  She patted me on the back and said, “It’s still your room, dear.  If you want, you can put away the doilies for the weekend.”  Doilies?  I looked around the room and saw the delicate pieces of lace adorning my chest of drawers and bedside table.  “This is worse than I thought,” I thought, “and I thought it was pretty bad already.”

I guess I understand that from now on, I am more of a guest than a resident in my parents’ house.  But couldn’t Mom have waited until, I don’t know, maybe my SECOND semester away from home to make my room into a weigh station for itinerant grandmas?  I can barely relax in this room; for fear that I will sit on a knitting needle, set off a trip-wired music box, or crack open the fragile head of a precariously perched Snow Baby.

But now that I’ve cooled off a bit, I’ve realized there’s a reason for this sudden makeover.  Mom has spent the past several decades trapped in a house with a husband and six boys.  That’s seven men leaving the toilet seat up.  Fourteen male feet tracking mud in on the carpet.  Dozens of throw pillows destroyed by over-throwing.  Waiting out this testosterone tsunami, Mom’s feminine instincts have been lying fallow.  Now, with her youngest son out of the house, she has awakened her girlish muse with an explosive, lilac-colored fury.

That leaves me to return to my distinctly masculine dorm room, and to bask in the glory of empty pizza boxes, dirty socks, and the unclaimed, grease-stained doggie bag that’s been in the mini-fridge since the dawn of time.

© 2006 Tim Mollen

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