Journal of College Admission: College Madam

My kid is going to college.We've signed the papers, taken out a second mortgage, registered for classes, selected the "premium" meal plan, and chosen which tenement building he is to occupy with a few hundred other 18-year-olds. It's "mixed-by-floor," which means in the early afternoon hung-over students will trundle by one another toting shaving cream and soggy bits of soap, orTampax and herbal hair conditioner, heading blearily for rancid bathrooms and afternoon classes.

An enormously energetic camp-counselor-type will likely be the resident advisor-some kid who worked at Camp Run-a-Mucca and kayaked down the coast of British Columbia with children from South Central. Some kid who's only just beyond acne and belatedly experimenting with serial monogamy. Some kid who is studying exercise-physiology and teaching aerobics, who'll serve my son hot chocolate and call him "Hey, Big Guy" like the friendly salesman at the sporting goods store.

I'd prefer a woman as big as a Winnebago, with an enormous, welcoming bosom, a resonant contralto, a pair of gnarled, no-nonsense hands, and a glare that can stop a Bengal tiger dead in its tracks. I'd like a woman who's roped steers and dealt blackjack, who baits fishes down by the dam and bakes a corn bread that makes grown men weep for their mothers. I'd like a woman who can size up my kid in a couple of minutes, beat him at cards, subdue his cowlicks with spit, teach him how to tie a double hitch, read to him from Wallace Stegner, and give him a crushing hug a couple times a week. Come to think of it, I'd like a whorehouse Madam-the kind with a heart of gold and dead-on sense.

My Madam R.A. would have a name right out of a tall tale. She'd be Dead-Eye Sue or One-Shot Betty, but he'd only get to hear the story long after graduation, when he drops by with his first-born child, a fresh salmon caught in the San juan Islands and his eyes swimming with gratitude.

If One-Shot Betty was the dormitory resident advisor, kids wouldn't divide their lives into separate compartments of "study" and "party," and drop by once a quarter for a five-minute cup of hot chocolate-they'd settle in with some strangled prose and a CD, and burn a Patsy Cline album while OneShot walked them out of a writing bog. They'd drink hard liquor with One-Shot, but she'd keep them on the straight and narrow with tales of the fools she knew who'd pickled their brains with alcohol. And One-Shot would remind them that the world is not comprised solely of 18year-olds. She'd have her father there in the dorm apartment, sporting a redolent, plaid bathrobe and a case of dementia, and her grandchildren too. They'd need some kid to push them down the halls on their Big Wheels, teach them to make a French braid or read The Runaway Bunny.

One-Shot would give a kid's parents a phone call every once in a while. She'd tell us what we already know. "You've raised up a fine one. I told your boy to get his hide back to the library and finish his paper, and then come on by for some corn bread. He's a hoot, that one-good head on his shoulders and a heart as mighty as the Mississippi. Wish we could do something about his hair, though. Ever tried Bag Balm?"

I don't suppose colleges are recruiting R.A.s from the Mustang Ranch. I guess we'll send the kid off to college anyway; that Camp Run-a-Mucca counselor is no doubt a fine young man, and hot chocolate surely makes a satisfying break from paper writing and partying. Still, I hope my kid will get out of his teenage tenement every once in a while, walk around in the world of geezers and kids with Big Wheels, and hang with folks who weave reading, working, fishing, and loving into a seamless, whole life. I'm betting there's a Dead-Eye Sue or a One-Shot Betty minding a diner somewhere near the U. I hope my kid will find the place when he gets tired of dorm life.

Catherine Sayers Hunter is the founding Head of San Francisco Friends School (CA), the first Quaker school in the Bay Area. She has served as intern, teacher,Arts Department Chair, Dean of Students, and Upper School Head at four independent schools across the country: Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, Maumee Valley Country Day School in Ohio, St.Timothy's in Maryland, and Head-Royce in Oakland, California. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and Loyola College in Baltimore. Cathy and her husband Scott have two sons, Benjamin, a senior at the University of Washington, and Matthew, who will head to Rhode Island School of Design in the fall of 2004.