Even though my kids are little enough that I’m more than a decade away from college admissions, I’d be lying if I said I never worried about it—what it’s going to cost, how far away they’ll be, all of that. But maybe it doesn’t need to fill me with dread. As Esquire writer Paul Pabst points out, college is increasingly an excuse for parents to relive the good old days. Check it out below. —Kevin Dupzyk, features director
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Why Are Parents Suddenly Pushing Their Kids Toward Party Schools?
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Squeezed by rising costs and middle-aged malaise, parents are steering their kids to big, affordable colleges down south where they can party. The kids can party too, if they want.
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Oh, I’m in it. I’m deep into the college-search process with my two high school daughters. College fairs. Arcane admissions data. Mailboxes stuffed with brochures from schools you’ve never heard of. We, as a family, have toured an even ten. They are starting to blend together. Lots of stonework . . . huge bookstores . . . minuscule dorm rooms. At the end of every tour, we look at one another and say, “This feels like it could be the one.” My own personal Groundhog Day.
It was when I started talking to friends who already have kids in college that I realized I was going about this all wrong. Among my generation, a new way to pick colleges has emerged. I call it the Do-Over.
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I could lie to you. I could say the cheapest ice chest is the best one for the money, or I could find a link to a direct-to-consumer brand that is trying desperately to disrupt the world of rotomolded coolers. Sometimes the cheapest thing is the best thing—I’m not denying that. I’ll gladly tell you to keep buying Chuck Taylors and Wrangler Cowboy Cut jeans. But sometimes in life, you need to put some money down. You need to invest. The problem, in these cases, is figuring out which thing is worth the price tag—not just a benefit of its status or years in first place like the college football dynasty du jour: The U, Saban’s Crimson Tide, Cignetti’s IU.
Yeti is worth it. Like all those dynasties, it’s still fighting off the competition. A Tundra cooler is, was, and always will be worth the number of dollar bills you could stuff into its cavernous hull, but it’s only sold for a few hundred. This is a real-deal dynasty. Why? Because it works, sure. Because it looks better than the rest with the roped handles, classic logo, and bear-proof toggles. Because in a quest for newness, Yeti has started making seasonal color drops that have made the brand more fun than ever.
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Rockwell, fifty-seven, is wearing Nike boxing shoes, sweaty gray gym shorts, and a rumpled red T-shirt with Redd Foxx on the front. He scratches at a scruffy Vandyke beard that he’s grown for a film in which he plays a soybean farmer. A tuft of unkempt hair on the right side of his head points due north, straight uptown.
I follow Redd Foxx’s gaze, and I notice that in this godforsaken room one of the mini fridges, the one practically right next to me, is exclusively Red Bull. Oh. “Do you want one?” I ask. “Do you want me to grab you one?”
“No, I better not do that. But thanks,” he says. And then, almost to himself: “I think I have had one once before.”
And here I thought the only way to find anything interesting to do with Sam Rockwell was to get out of there. Sam Rockwell, meanwhile, walked in and almost immediately started feeling around the room’s edges to identify a point of possible interest, even if it was just a fridge full of Red Bull. To me this room was a prison. To Rockwell, it was a possibility.
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