COLUMN: "Rules for the Road"

From Caren Lissner's "Pretty Sneaky Sis," Spring '92. Today begins Spring Break, which, for many of us, is just another chance to spend ten days fighting with our parents. Home just isn't the haven it used to be. Either your little sister Jaweena has taken over your room, or your parents moved across the country after you started college. This leads to conversations such as this: FRIEND: Where are you from? STUDENT: Er . . . uh . . . well, I went to high school in Tennessee but my parents just moved to California. FRIEND: What's it like there? STUDENT: I don't know. FRIEND: Do you like it there? STUDENT: I don't know. I once -- and this is true -- went "home" to southern New York state and was supposed to call my mom to pick me up when I got to the train station. Unfortunately, I'd left the piece of paper with my new number and address on it back at school. Luckily there was a police station next door to the train station. A cop helped me figure out where I lived and drove me home. It wasn't too bad, 'cause he let me sit on the counter and wear his hat. Anyway, not all people dread going home. Some of them are thrilled about it. I've found that the real problems occur when you go home to a divorced parent. They need and rely on you, and going to college is stabbing them in the back in a way, no matter how much they wanted you to go. A friend suggested to me that the fights occur more between mothers and daughters than other parents and children, regardless of maritial status. I don't have any data to back this up. In any case, I've found a handy formula for predicting the fight situation at home: MOM-HOLLER COROLLARY: Number of years your mother has been divorced x Number of days you'll be home, divided by 100 = the percent chance you have of screaming at your mom. While we're in the family vein, I might add that if your parents are divorced, you are more likely to room with people with divorced parents, just as offspring of functional families are likely to room together. I don't know why this is; perhaps someone over in the Psych building should do research on it and pay us $6 an hour to complete questionnaires. It's just another college truism. There are a few other laws, theories and formulas I've discovered for predicting college life. Not all of them deal with dysfunctional families. Read on and you will be able to nip trouble in the bud. FIXX THROAT FACT: One cough leads to another. It's contagious. Cough in a lecture hall and the lecture hall coughs with you. Everyone will have a sudden realization that they, too, need to cough. SUPERIOR SAT SCRAWL: If Penn's average SAT score is 1280, then for every three people who got 1500, there's some kid walking around with a 620. MURDOCH'S LAW: Many people on this campus claim not to watch television, but it's hard not to notice the steady decline over the last twelve months of clubs meeting during "90210." REVERSE RESIDENTIAL ROACH RULE: The number of minutes it takes for a roach to appear after you are overheard muttering "Gee, we haven't had any roaches around here in a while" is a very small number indeed. DISSED LIVING LAW: No matter how many ways your "friends" try to come up with an adequate rooming situation, someone's going to get stabbed in the back. STICKY CINNABON SYNDROME: When your three-hour class has a break and you want a Cinnabon but don't want to spend two bucks or consume a zillion calories, the chances are very high that the person sitting next to you will buy a steaming, sweet Cinnabon and eat that Cinnabon right in front of you, causing you to drool pools of water in which tadpoles could thrive. BOOK CONVERSION FORMULA: If you have a different edition of a book than everyone else, remember this conversion: first page of book one divided by first page of book two times a constant X = last page of book one divided by last page of book two. When you figure out what X is, multiply it by whatever page of book 2 you're on and you'll get the equivalent page of book 1, if the text is the same. LOST TRANSIT LAW: Before every Penn break, something stupid will happen to public transportation systems. Past examples include a Greyhound strike, a subway crash, and three fires. There was another SEPTA crash Wednesday morning. Lo and behold, there may be a SEPTA strike during this break. Next year we'll probably get a blizzard. MID-ETERNITY RULE: Midterms don't end until finals. Another theory tells me that most of you have already left and aren't here to read this column. There are probably a good percentage of you who decided you've been working too hard and gave yourself the whole week off. Well, fine. If you're one of the six people reading the paper today, call me and tell me. I'll get back to you as soon as I figure out where I live. · · Caren Lissner is a junior English major from New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. Pretty Sneaky Sis appears alternate Fridays.

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