The Boy

I used to wonder what what kind of mom I would be when it came to dealing with my daughter’s boyfriends. Would I be the type of mom who introduced myself to each one by sitting on the couch with a forty bottle between my legs and a shotgun on my lap while tossing out conversational landmines like, “Did you know that it’s legal to kill your daughter’s suitor in over twenty different countries? Oh, and by the way, do you have a passport?” Or would I be the harried, disinterested kind of mom, the one who glances up from the newspaper and says, “Didn’t you used to be taller? And blacker? Oh, really? Well, excuse me. I certainly didn’t mean to offend you, Ming.” Or maybe I would even be the private detective mom, the kind who obsessively googles each new boyfriend for their credit scores, arrest records, and hate-filled blogs by former girlfriends.

Eventually, I decided that I would probably end up being a mix of all three. I’m much too nosy to ever be the disinterested type, and yet not quite nosy enough to be a cyber-stalker. (Really: pay no attention to those court orders.) And, of course, I don’t even own a gun (I own plenty of knives, but that’s another story). In other words, I decided that what I was going to do was strike a balance between aloofness and intimidation. Because, like it or not, I was going to have to do something. No matter how much I might wish it otherwise, the future was inevitable: Clementine was going to bring home a never-ending stream of disagreeable young men (and maybe even a few disagreeable young women), and we were just going to have to deal with it.

My husband and I even had a game—the “that’s who Clementine is going to bring home,” game. We’d see some guy walking down the street missing all his front teeth and mumbling to himself and my husband would turn to me and say, “There he is: that’s the guy that Clementine is going to bring home for Thanksgiving. We’ll have to put the turkey in a blender.” Then I’d look around and see some guy with dirty blond dreadlocks, a vacuous expression and a mangy dog on a string and I’d say, “Uh-uh. There’s the guy she’s going to bring home. We’re going to have to cook a tofurkey.” The game would usually end when one of us would take it a little bit too far and point out some guy with the collar popped on his Hollister shirt and say, “No. That’s the guy. We’re going to have to get matching plates,” and then the other one would shudder and say, “Take it back, take it back!”

But then, something completely unexpected happened. Clementine brought home a nice guy. A smart guy. A funny guy. A guy we all like—even Clyde. And suddenly I was really worried, because now, instead of thinking up new ways to get the boyfriends to go, I started wondering how long they’re each going to get to stay.

Look, I’m not saying that I have any idea how this particular relationship will turn out: the last thing I claim to be is an expert on relationships, especially those involving other people. But if I know anything, I know that people always change. Sometimes they change together. Sometimes they don’t. And when they don’t, somebody usually ends up saying goodbye.
What this means for me is that, unfortunately, this whole dating thing is turning out to be a lot more complicated than I had originally anticipated. In other words, it is nothing like the mid-season sitcom script I had previously assigned it in my head.

But then again, real life usually isn’t.

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