As your parents' friend, you'll get to hear gossip about other parents (the short version: Tim's dad is also Bryan's dad, and Mr. Werner wears a bra). They'll also tell you the hopes and dreams they had in college (the short version: hemp store). You'll realize that your worries will never go away, even after you begin worrying for a child. And if you think that's scary, don't even mention sex to your new "friends." You might get to hear how you were conceived, and you'll never look at seven strawberry daiquiris and that old couch in the basement the same way again.

But becoming friends with your parents will also often give you a new sense of being alone in the world. You will have lost parental protection--a benevolent presence between the stupid things you do and a world that loves to ridicule them. Fall down in the snow? Get a D on a midterm? Have a stranger say you're a rich, arrogant bastard in a letter they mean for the entire campus to read? First and foremost, these concerns are yours to deal with. Friends new or old can only help.

But, accepting the very scary proposition that you or I may be parents in a few years, maybe we need this. I'll definitely need a long time facing life's unbuffered calamities before I can convince a toddler that I'm an Omnipotent Provider.

Also, maybe it's only right to really appreciate whomever played the role of parent in your life now, while hopefully they're still around to thank.

One last note. My parents would like you to know that my remark about seven daiquiris and a couch in the basement was in no way drawn from my family history. In fact, they would like you to know we don't even use the basement. Not while we're renting it out to Sam the Chauffering School Student (we're letting him practice on us for free!) and Cousin Katie Cooks-Every-Day.

David A. Fahrenthold '00 is a history concentrator in Dunster House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.