The good, the bad and the ugly

I had a pretty interesting weekend, I must say. It consisted of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good - I learned that my daughter Allie has been accepted into the University of Georgia. The bad - I got “Pete Best-ed” from the church band. And the ugly – I turned 46 years old Friday.

Let’s concentrate on the good. I was filled with elation upon learning that she’d gotten in to UGA. We were sweating it out, because it’s a lot harder to get in there now than I was when I attended. I think all I had to do was spell “UGA” and demonstrate that I knew which foot the proper shoe went on. For football players, they waived the spelling requirement.

But now they look at all sorts of crazy things like grade-point average and high school curriculum and test scores and what not, and it’s pretty competitive.

After the initial elation and pride that I felt, reality came barreling down the track and smacked me like it was Ike Turner and I didn’t have supper ready on time. The first blow was when I realized that college isn’t free, even with the HOPE scholarship. After getting word that she’d been admitted, my daughter asked me to buy her a new Georgia shirt as a reward. I pointed out that I was about to “reward” her for the next four years.

But the money can be raised, hopefully without me getting a second job or having to sell an organ on Craigslist. Now it’s the thought of turning my baby girl loose in Athens that’s giving me an ulcer the size of Lake Huron.

Of course, things have changed when I was a student there. Really, all I did was study, go to the library, attend the occasional Bible study and maybe play some Parcheesi with my friends, if I could find time after I finished up my work at the homeless center.

Okay, so that’s not exactly all 100 percent true. I lived in a house with four other guys for a year and prayed every time there was a knock on the door that it wasn’t a DEA agent. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, mind you (I’m being honest this time), but I’m pretty sure somebody in the house was at any given time.

The next year I moved into an apartment. I had a weirdo roommate who left town in the cover of night about halfway through the year, owing me and a bunch of other people quite a bit of money. They don’t put this sort of thing on the college brochures.

I only went to UGA for two years, after first graduating from a junior college. I never lived in the dorms or ate in the campus cafeterias, so my daughter will get to experience a side of college life that I never saw. She will meet new people, which is good, since I mostly hung around guys I already knew from high school and had also moved on to Athens. Two of them who lived in the house died before they reached 40, so in retrospect it was perhaps not the best decision.

But she will do great. She’s smart and ambitious and I know she will continue to make me proud. Just thinking about it makes me smile, and helps me get over the sting of being asked to hand over my drumsticks, and getting one year closer to 50.