As families roll into Bradley to catch up with their kids, there is one ritual that always occurs when the sun goes down: partying. Yes, parents consume copious amounts of alcohol while talking to their child’s friends and teasing their children in front of potential love interests.
This phenomenon happens across college campuses around the nation during family weekends, but it seems that parents whose children are in Greek life push this agenda more than most.
Parents either go all in or all out on the festivities going on inside the Greek houses on Fredonia. If someone is in a fraternity or sorority, their parents are 99 percent likely to drink with them to excess.
When I looked around this past weekend, I witnessed mothers laughing loudly with red wine swirling in their cheap Dollar Tree wine glasses. I also observed a father chug beer, drunkenly shred on a guitar in a basement and then proceed to go to Saddle Up as a wingman for his son, hoping to hook him up with a cute girl before the night ended.
“I think the craziest thing I have seen parents do is definitely taking turns drinking out of a beerbong,” Sheridan Hurtig, a junior television arts major, said.
Yes, parents take turns drinking out of an overly used funnel device designed to help you chug a beer in one huge gulp. Every fraternity house has one and none of them know how long it’s been since it was washed.
Most fathers who come back for family weekend seem to relive their glory days through their sons and daughters. They want to feel like they did when everything was carefree, and they didn’t have to face the reality of mortgages and minivans.
Mothers usually take things slower than fathers do. Most mothers know their limits, but there is always the small group that pushes it to the extreme.
For example, some mothers take up an entire kitchen area to play a game of dice, getting so into it that it turns from a fun game to a cutthroat competition.
Some people may think parents take it too far, but it is a good thing for parents to flush the wild side out of their system by partying with their child.
Parents have spent all their time and devotion to their kids, making sure to shield them from their own mistakes and the harshness of real life. They should take this time to cut loose and enjoy the fact that their child is still in college.
So let parents run up a high bill at the bar, eat greasy food and relive a little bit of their glory days, because that short weekend of fun will produce many memories in the long run.
