This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
When I was going through our third son's things a number of years ago, I found a paper with the words "Sluff Plan" scrawled in his handwriting across the top. Sure enough. It was a document detailing how he and his little school buddies planned to cut class.
Naturally, I confronted my son about this so-called plan, but secretly I was kind of impressed with his daring vision and his attention to detail. These were a few of my favorite lines:
"Meeting place: anywhere far from people we know and that know us."
"What do we do for the first hour or so: just keep it cool. Stay away from danger houses. To unknown faces say we're from out of town if they ask what are we doing."
"If the coast is clear: go up to my room and play Playstation for half an hour or 45 minutes, plan what we're going to do and then THE SKY IS THE LIMIT."
I even wrote a column about my son's sluff plan — ostensibly to warn parents about what the kids are up to behind our backs, but mostly because it made me laugh. Then I folded up the paper, put it away and forgot all about it — until last week.
My son came home to go through his childhood belongings one last time before taking off for graduate school in North Carolina this month.
I know! He's moving a million miles away! And for all we know, he may never return to live in Utah again. In fact, the chances that he will are remote.
As you can imagine, it was a bittersweet experience to watch him go through his things: Ninja Turtles, old baseball cards, basketball trophies, school assignments, report cards, certificates of achievement, dance pictures, letters and notes written back in the days before texting.
And, of course, there was the infamous sluff plan for all the world to see.
It was as though my son was a personal effects archeologist, going on a dig through the layers of his own life. As he unearthed this artifact or that, I could clearly hear the voices of mothers before me uttering all the familiar clichés. Where did the time go? Just yesterday I was pinning a towel around your neck because you were Superman and needed a cape.
Well, anyway. The time did, in fact, go. There's no getting around that. And here we all are, moving on to the next big thing. I think this reality entitles me to give some advice, don't you?
To all you young mothers out there who drop dead from pure exhaustion at the end of each day, I'm going to say the very thing I once hated to hear from women whose children were already gone. This crazy intense time of life doesn't last very long, actually. Before you know it, it'll be over. So hang in there and (try to) enjoy the moments you have together.
And to my son? Dude! No sluffing! You're in graduate school now. Meanwhile, don't forget that note you wrote to yourself when you were younger: The sky's the limit.
Ann Cannon can be reached at acannon@sltrib.com or facebook.com/columnistcannon.