COLUMN: My own personal ‘Meet the Parents’
As a fifth-year senior who spent a majority of his collegiate experience aloof of any luck with women, a quick note to all freshman: We get it.
Yeah, we see you. It’s week three and every last one of you are already in relationships. We’ve observed enough dudes pretending they are actually into One Direction and girls clamoring on about whatever a Macklemore is – is it a snack food? It had a pound sign next to it, too. I’m too old for this – to note the most melodramatic romantic interlude this side of “High School Musical” has commenced. As if the barrage of hair flips, giggles and strawberry-flavored Fergie Ferg Fresh lip gloss – actual item, look it up – wasn’t clue enough.
We’re glad you’re “happ” – just remember at some point you’ll be faced with a challenge no level of lip gloss can save. Soon enough, you’ll have to survive meeting the family.
It’s never an easy task meeting the family, where every moment is a pivotal audition to the next day of your romantic life. From the moment you fall unsure whether or not to take off your shoes when you walk into the house, you learn quickly that no meet-the-family experience falls short of an adventure.
Think I’m lying? Here’s a quick illustration from two weeks should show you I have just to expertise.
My welcome to Jenny’s family came through a normal orientation ritual found in many families: I had to get by the family dog.
Baxter is no easy Yorkshire terrier. He posts a big personality and an even bigger bark. Baxter shrieked at me feet for the duration of the evening, promoting a comment from potential mother-in-law that Baxter doesn’t warm up too easy to strangers. I immediately knew my first challenge had been laid down.
The rest of the evening was a wave of quick victories for me. My strategy went like clockwork. Make them laugh over pizza, talk football with Dad, visit brother at work, impress everyone with an unhealthy knowledge of “Full House” and of course perfecting the cuddle-to-making-rest-of-family-so-uncomfortable-that-you-are-physically-mauling-their-princess ratio – a much more sensitive line than you would imagine. When it was all done I plopped quietly onto my TV-room-dwelling cot for a period of sleep. I had survived day one without as much as a hitch.
I awoke the next morning ready to seal this deal. I had done well so far and nothing short of early ’90s Troy Aikman showing up to sweep Jenny from my grasp was going to throw off my focus to win this family over. I climbed upstairs to greet my suitors, made a quick football-related jab, did my best to make mom laugh and get some sort of positive reinforcement out of any of Jenny’s three brothers – yep, three brothers, and from my vantage point they all could very easily have known the art of Krav Maga. I had tunnel vision and was full of sincere affection, and though they proved hard to win over, I was ready for victory.
I would have my queen and nothing was going crack my focus.
This is what I at least thought, until I told Mom I was going to take a shower.
“A shower, eh?” she asked. She had a big smirk on at this point, and I had no clue how to read it.
“You’ll need a towel. One second.”
She moved toward the back room. Everyone in the room was smiling. All of them. Mischief was most definitely afoot.
Mom came out from the hallway and handed a towel over to me. Now her smirk was a grin.
Looking for answers I looked down at the towel, woven white and embroidered in cursive gold the letters S-T-E-V-E. I promise I’m not making this up.
Unless there was a cousin Steve I had never heard of, that towel blatantly had my friggin’ name on it.
I froze. I wanted them to accept me but I wasn’t near the level promoting arranged crafts in my name. That’s honeymoon plateau. I just barely got to the point where kissing in public felt kosher. This was far beyond my parameters.
Jenny came from her bedroom and saw what I was holding and immediately chimed in. “Wait, there’s more than the hand towels?”
They made hand towels, too? This is too much. What, am I going to do if I find out they already leased out a duplex for us?
The next 20 seconds were a harrowing duration of staring, panic and random one-liners accompanying “Pawn Stars” chiming from the corner. I said the only thing I could muster to save face through the largest curve I’d ever received via drying implement.
“Do I get pillow mints too?” I hesitantly asked.
Mom laughed. Jenny smiled. Dad didn’t flog me with heavy things. I had made it out of the towel test alive.
Perhaps it was the ever-pleasant conversation the rest of the day, maybe the impressiveness of doing dishes without invitation or Baxter waking up cuddled next to me the next morning without so much as a dog whimper, but I endured my first of many meet-the-family weekends with huge success and even a box of fresh, homegrown peaches. As we rolled back into town, Jenny exclaimed that I had done a great job and I asked if she expected as successful of an outing with my family.
She grinned. “I’m pretty sure,” she said. “At least I know I’d be smart enough to keep all of my clothes with me. Mom just told me you totally left your pants on our family room desk.”
Gulp. You can’t win them all, I guess.