The students are coming back to Blacksburg. This sleepy little town is about to go from a population of 10,000 to 35,000. I’d gotten to like the town’s sparseness, the slow, friendly approach to just about everything. I think that’s about to disappear.
Outside my window, where there’s a metered parking lot, SUV after SUV pulls in and circles through, each with a loaded luggage compartment atop their roof rack, each thinking that they’ll find a hidden parking space among the 30 spots that, somehow, the SUV 20 feet ahead of them had missed.
All around town there are strutting freshman, sporting shiny new shoes and spanking-new haircuts, saddled with the embarassing burden of parents, each small grouping a study in both contrast and in generational similarities.
For today, it’s all a bit endearing, though still alarming. I fear what things will be like, what my apartment will be like, what my block will be like, in a week’s time.