So you did it. Boy to man, beer to Scotch, Converse high tops to Kenneth Cole boots. You did all that.

HOME STRAITS You come home not the same as you were when you left. Hairline slightly receding. Maybe a little gray. A little bit of a belly. And more personality than your parents are ready to handle. All of a sudden there are two alpha dogs under one roof. There's the dominant parent and the dominant child. Each is the leader of his respective household, because there's not just one household anymore. There was the one you grew up in, the one where you followed the leader. And now the one you were forced out of the nest to make. Fly now or crawl home. Forge your own destiny or come back to your boyhood bed. So you did it. Boy to man, beer to Scotch, Converse high tops to Kenneth Cole boots. You did all that. You learned how to handle myriad social situations. How to survive on three hours of sleep. How to get blood out of shirts and grease out of pants. How to lead your own life and dream your own dreams. You know you've changed. You're sure of it. You could take yourself anywhere--Vegas, Prague, Calcutta--and be just fine. Except for one place. You already know the saying: "You can't go home again." Being back home means being back on vestigial rules. A later curfew is still a curfew. The nurturing embrace and all its trappings suddenly turn constricting. You're a pot-bound plant whose roots ran out of room to grow, a seedling who was loved and sung to and kept from the elements until it became an enormous, strong tree that had to get thrown out of the greenhouse or destroy the very place of its youth. The best parents are too good. They make their own roles obsolete. Of course they provide encouragement and understanding and capital. Of course we love them. But we no longer tug on our mother's skirt with every boo boo. And we don't have to ask dad about the birds and the bees. Subtly, quietly, day by day our parents become our friends. Irreplaceable friends. Authoritative friends, but friends nonetheless. This is a strange transition. Instead of your father saying, "Help your mother with the dishes," your mother says, "Would you mind helping me with the dishes?" And so you do. That's what friends are for. Friends gather together at the holidays and birthdays and funerals. Friends buy each other wonderful gifts. But the best friends in the world seldom live together. It's just too damn hard to be someone's friend all the time. Living with your best friends would be like having lobster for dinner every night. You would get sick of life's rarest treasure. After a certain point, you need to have your own place. Even the most understanding mother in the world can't ignore the G. Gordon Liddy Stacked & Packed Calendar ("featuring America's most beautiful women, heavily armed") hanging in the hallway. And there's the way you crack your gum at 4 a.m. and your dad's habit of leaving Wheat Thins everywhere. These are roommate frictions, but there is something not equal about this newly complicated relationship. You can ask your roommate to pick his towel up off the floor. You can't ask your dad to do the same thing, because it's still his house. Besides, in the process of becoming an adult with your own taste and your own way of doing things, you notice that certain parts of your childhood residence are pretty unsatisfactory. You don't like your mom's brand of laundry detergent or your dad's VCR. The furniture is all wrong. There's nothing edible in the fridge. You can never find a Phillips screwdriver or a good manual can opener. There are no new magazines or non-girlie soaps in the bathroom. There is far too much potpourri. But it's exactly right for mom and dad. The empty nest is on its way to becoming a place for grandkids. Now that's a scary thought. I'm not quite ready to buy Wheat Thins in bulk or subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens. Maybe in a decade, when I finally take down my high school diploma from my former bedroom and put it in a box in an attic beneath the roof that some future Mrs. Houts and I will share. And I'll become a dad. And my kids will wonder why I crack my gum at 4 a.m. And I'll send them off to college so that I can become something more than just a parent. -- Fred Houts '99