I Don’t Trust That You Will Get Up.
During the summer months, about a dozen summer workshops were offered to high school juniors and seniors preparing to apply to colleges. The workshops covered every possible aspect of college admissions, from essay writing to ivy league admissions secrets.
Dylan agreed that some of these workshops might be helpful for him, although he was going to be out of town for many of them. Still, he signed up for two.
The first one, Completing the Common App, started at 10 a.m. on an otherwise plan-less day. As usual, I got up that morning early, showered, made breakfast and waited for Dylan to come downstairs. But Dylan turned off his alarm, went back to sleep, and missed the whole thing.
It was quite frustrating.
But… he woke up in such a panic that he completed nearly the entire Common App on his own in about an hour. So there was an up-side.
For the second workshop, I was feeling slightly under the weather. I had been sleeping a lot, trying to get over whatever was bothering me. So I offered Dylan an opportunity.
“I trust you,” I told Dylan. “But I don’t trust that you will get up in the morning and go to your workshop. So I am not going to get out of bed to see what happens. If you want to go, you can take the car.”
This caught his attention. I continued: “You need to eat a healthy breakfast and leave by 9:30. The main road is closed, so you will have to go the long way around. And if you make it to the workshop, you can go out to lunch with your girlfriend afterward. Does that work for you?”
He nodded, nearly giddy. He started texting his girlfriend before I even finished my offer.
Then, on the morning of the workshop, I woke up two full hours before it was supposed to start. I wanted to jump up and see if Dylan was getting ready yet. I wanted to write a note and put it in the car, in case he did. I wanted to casually sit downstairs to watch what happened.
But I didn’t. Instead, I forced myself to go back to sleep. I was sick, so it wasn’t that hard to do.
When I woke up again, Dylan’s bedroom door was open and sun was streaming through the window. He was gone. The car was gone.
I texted him, “Congratulations!” Then I offered him an additional half hour with his girlfriend if he came home with his much-needed registration code for his school’s online college prep program.
Unfortunately, the “extra time with the girlfriend” didn’t work because she wasn’t allowed to go to lunch. And even though he could have skedaddled with the car for two hours, he didn’t.
Dylan chose to do the right thing instead. He drove directly home, which is what I’d asked him to do if his girlfriend couldn’t do lunch. Not only that – but he came home with the registration code!
He did what he needed to do – but sadly, didn’t get to do what he wanted to do.
So I told him he could go to the coffee shop. I even told him he could drive Shane – for the first time ever – to the coffee shop, too.
I am not sure what was wrong with me. I was queasy the whole time they were gone. But they both survived.
Overall, it was a highly successful, productive day.