If you live long enough and don’t go to prison, you will

eventually inherit every single piece of furniture your parents

ever owned. For example, I am about to receive a couch and chair from Mom and Dad, both of them green (the furniture, not my parents). They are both sturdy, comfortable, wonderful pieces of furniture that will never come close to matching anything else I own. The reason I’m receiving the old couch and chair is because they bought a new couch and chair, probably with the money that they were going to give me for graduation. Regardless, the new couch and chair are also wonderful pieces of furniture that take up roughly 50 percent of the total floor space in the room.

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What spurred this purchase? I asked, dumbfounded at the sheer size of the couch that my mother was sitting upon.

Well, your father and sister were always fighting over who got to sit in the old recliner, so we just decided to buy a new one, she said.

So what’s with the couch? I asked.

It was next to the recliner in the show room. It just seemed appropriate, she said.

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I sat down in the new recliner next to my sister in the old recliner while my father sat on the floor and cursed under his breath.

No, in all seriousness, I have much more respect for my parents than that, which is the actual topic of today’s column. Without my parents, I never could have graduated from college, which I assume I will still be doing in about three weeks.

I’d like to take this time to thank my parents for a number of things.

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Thank you for allowing me to attend the college of my choice, even though you were under the assumption that if I attended SIU I would fall in with a group of guys that resembled those crazies from Animal House,’ who would spend their time drinking beer and harassing innocent women. Thank God that didn’t happen.

Thank you for helping me move into Schneider Hall, and especially for carrying all that crap up 10 flights of stairs.

Thanks for not making me feel like a wretch all those nights I called home asking for money.

Thank you for being proud of me those semesters when I made the Dean’s List. Thank you for being proud of me those semesters when I didn’t.

Thanks for not disowning me that evening the Seth and Jo-Jo, World’s Finest Jack-asses’ Tour was cut short by the long arm of the law.

But most of all, thanks for supporting me throughout almost a half-decades worth of Bursar’s Bills, library fines, term papers, girl problems, perpetual hunger and messy living places. You both did real good.

For those of you reading this that aren’t my parents, (yes, all three of you), take the time to thank your parents, or whoever it is that is helping you through college. There are very few among us that can actually get through college completely by themselves.