COLUMN: Bringing the girlfriend home to family rivalry
I took Anne, my girlfriend of nine months, to meet my family this weekend.
I wasn’t too nervous myself.
I figured if Jesse could manage living with a significant other for almost five years on “Full House,” we could handle 12 hours or so with the Schwartzman clan.
I waited for Anne to straighten her mature-looking argyle sweater, and we made our way in.
Things started off without a hitch. I did my assigned duty of walking her around the house and trying to remember everyone’s name, as she fulfilled her responsibility to nervously look responsible for the parents, look cool for the young kids, look interesting and wife-worthy for the siblings, and — most importantly, if the situation and all elements of earth and the heavens presented themselves — to eventually say something.
We ate dinner, talked about family, cleaned up after dinner, talked about school, sat around the couch and talked about paint samples, and considered playing Scattergories. It was turning out to be quite the pleasant routine day with the folks.
Then we hit a moment I like to call “The Fork.” It’s the pivotal moment in every meet-the-parent experience when one of two things occurs:
1. Family shows significant-other-in-question baby pictures of yours truly.
2. A male member of the family feels competitive and some string of athletic debacles ensues.
I sat on the leather couch looking as future-husband-like as possible, which for some reason made me think of Peter Waide from “Brother’s Keeper,” and silently and fervently prayed the Speaker of My House would choose No. 2.
I could see everyone’s eyes moving slowly toward the scrapbook cabinet and felt a lump in my throat, until I heard, by the grace of something not found on earth, my father’s voice.
“Now, I may be an old guy, but I’m putting 10 bucks on the table that no one here can beat me at a game of basketball.”
Sigh. That was the beckoned call. Just like clockwork, all of us males in the family did our moral obligation to accept the challenge.
Given none of us had hurled a leather sphere at a Dr. James Naismith edition peach basket since Powerpuff Girls backpacks were in style, we made our way to the backyard for some 3-on-3-bragging-right-wielding pandemonium. The ladies soon followed to watch — this wasn’t one to miss.
Though elated I never had to deal with my girlfriend seeing toddler photos of me squeezing toothpaste into an already running bathtub faucet (disregard that one, Anne, I was kidding. It really doesn’t exist. Gulp), I must admit I was nervous.
I already twisted my ankle quite severely playing one on one with my 14-year-old nephew just hours earlier — stop laughing — so I knew I couldn’t bring all of my, as the youngins call it, “game.”
We did our routine 150-minute stretch and then started things off swiftly, as my team, Team Dad, ran to a quick 3-1 lead against Team Not Dad, to nobody’s shock, as my father, though unable to lift his left arm over his head, has the meanest bounce pass since Lola Bunny.
The rest of the routine ended like a blur. Everyone began heaving 3-pointers to no avail, dad kept epically bounce passing to the back fence, my brother-in-law kept yelling at me to “post up” even though neither of us knew what that meant, and my youngest nephew did his famous storm-off-because-he-couldn’t-call-a-foul-after-missing-a-wide-open-lay-up-even-a-Gila-monster-could-have-made performance.
It was then that finally, after the numbers had dwindled to two on one and all baskets counted as threes so someone could finally get to 11, a winner was crowned and we — the the triumphant males of the clan — did what we always know to do and lay splayed on the hardtop, vowing never to drink Pepsi again.
None of us knew who won that day, or even what the score was from the get-go. All I really knew was Anne won the family’s admiration when she couldn’t stop laughing halfway through the drive home.
The funniest thing is that probably means, at least according to the family, that she’s a keeper.
– Steve Schwartzman is a junior majoring in marketing and minoring in speech communication. His column runs every Wednesday. He loves sports, comedy and creative writing. He encourages any comments at his email steve.schwartzman@aggiemail.usu.edu, or find him on Facebook.