Moo Cow

"Are those cows?" asked R.'s son pointing to a group of animals on the far side of the field we were passing.

"Cows say 'moo'," I told him. "Those are horses. Horsies say 'neigh.'"

"I'm not stupid," he said.

"Of course you're not, buddy," said his father in a soothing tone.

"Shut up," he muttered, slinking down next to my oldest in the backseat.

We were on the first leg of college visits for my oldest. R. and I have been best friends since seventh grade. His three boys are about the same ages as mine and we've traveled plenty together. Sometimes our wives come too, on the longer trips, but lots of times it's been the boys and R. and me, to cabins and parks and lodges and resorts.

As the boys have grown, though, it's gotten harder. Sports are more demanding, school friends are more important, and life just got busy. R. lives on the other side of town and there are entire months that go by now that we don't even see each other.

Which is why a month or two ago, when R. found about the college visits, he asked if he and his oldest could join us.

"Our boy's a year younger than Snag's," said R.'s wife. "It's kind of early for him to be thinking about college, isn't it?"

"I want him to see there's an alternative to prison," said R. "Besides, it'll be fun."

Our first visit was a big land-grant university in a small city a few hundred miles from home. Nice enough campus, nice enough people, nice enough all around.

"What did you think?" I asked as we got back in the car that afternoon.

"I'd rather be dead than live here," he said.

"When you're my age you'd rather be dead, period," I said.

"I'd rather be dead than be you," he replied.

"They grow up so fast," said R., wiping away an imaginary tear.

The next morning we toured a medium sized private school in a big city a few hundred miles further down the road. It was a beautiful campus in a lovely part of town. The admissions presentation included an engaging, witty engineering professor and an articulate, self-deprecating student from Italy.

"I wish I could go to school here," R. whispered ten minutes into it.

"Tell me about it," I whispered back.

"How much is tuition?" he asked.

I told him.

"Jesus Christ!" he blurted, prompting a scathing look from his son.

"Yeah, but with some of this, some of that, we can probably find a way to make it work."

"What's his GPA?" he asked.

I told him.

"Jesus Christ!" he blurted again, prompting another look from his son. "I guess we know one thing he got from the Lovely Bride," he continued.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because we spent high school smoking and reading Kafka."

"And playing foosball," I reminded him. "We played a lot of foosball."

"Foosball too," he agreed. "I still can't figure out why that didn't attract more girls."

"They were probably scared away by our coolness."

"Be quiet," his son hissed.

The presentation ended and we wandered over to the bookstore to buy t-shirts and magnets.

"What did you think?" I asked my son.

"I liked it," he said.

We spent another day in the city, eating barbecue and Italian food and sightseeing. On the way home we stopped at Field of Dreams, where we'd been years before.

"Do we have to do this?" my son asked, reluctantly taking his baseball glove out of the trunk.

"Humor me," I said.

R. and I played catch with our sons for a while, until they were bored and our arms hurt. We bought some more t-shirts and magnets and got back in the car.

"Cats in the Cradle," said R., wiping away just a little bit of a real tear this time.

"Cats say 'meow,'" I said.