You Heard It Here First

Elijah is going to The University Of Illinois. There, I said it. I’ll explain why in a minute.

Eli, Steve and I drove down to central Illinois this weekend to help our mom move. We dropped him off at Dad and Connie’s place and went through the somewhat painful process of consolidating decades worth of stuff. No, we didn’t find any secret boxes full of money. Nor did we find any old bongs. I did find my old copy of “Rock and Roll Over” by K.I.S.S. on vinyl, which I brought home. Diana suggested I bring it to work.

When we finally got back to Dad’s, we discovered that Eli had spent the majority of the day chasing his cousin Fox and setting the bar for cute very high. Unfortunately, his romping did not include taking a nap. Eli instead decided naptime was the perfect hour to practice his singing of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

So by bedtime, I was a little worried about how Eli would fare. Overtired plus no nap, multiplied by cousins divided by no mommy multiplied by the square root of being in a different place equals me pacing with a squirming, screaming boy all night.

I decided to ease him into the idea of sleeping by hanging out in our designated room, my brother, and future dental surgeon, Luke’s room. Among his dental-related knickknacks (which used to include an oversized plastic toothbrush), Eli discovered an oversized University of Illinois snow globe. As I tried to convince him to read the book I brought from home explaining what it means to have a baby brother, he was fixated on the globe that featured the school I got busted for underage drinking in.

After wrestling it out of his hands a hundred times and then immediately returning it to his hands when he screamed, I let him take the snow globe into bed. I turned the light off and he curled his body around the globe. He was lulled to sleep to the U of I fight song that played when you wound it up. I helped him sleep by making up words to the fight song. I can’t remember the exact words, but they went something like, “These aren’t my beers, officer…some dude asked me to hold them…”

Long story short, Eli made it through the night with only one wake up and when the sun came up he said, “Snow globe?” I looked up the estimated U of I cost of tuition and fees for 2025. $1,500,000.