One of the reasons why downsizing is difficult at our very middle age is the dependent child.  He is not quite ready to be completely independent since he is in law school and not employed. I was married at his age, working full time, supporting my husband who was in graduate school, and walking to work on crazy cold mornings and wickedly hot days. This, however, is not the point.  Law school son came home briefly yesterday to pick up his old Apple laptop which he gave to his dad when we purchased his new Apple laptop as a college graduation gift when he started law school.

You are now instructed to sing to yourself or hum the now politically incorrect 1910 Fruitgum Company’s hit “Indian Giver” to yourself.

Law school son’s new laptop has a problem, and he wants his old machine back while he waits for the new one to be fixed.  Earlier in the school year, I let him take my sad cell phone for about a month while he had his zippy smartphone in the repair shop since he dropped it on the tile floor of a posh bar in Washington, DC late in the summer.  A few months later, he needed to put the phone back in the shop again for the same recurring problem, and this time my husband let our son use Dad’s even-sadder-than-mine personal cell phone. Last night, I asked law school son what he would do if we weren’t here or if we were in Chicago. He said he would have to figure it out, but in the meantime, he said, “I will exploit you, and get dinner out of it.”

Indeed he did, and we had a lovely dinner, just the two of us.