The Parent-Daughter Trap & A Potentially Suitable Boy
What happens when you visit your parents for a mere four hours one fine Sunday evening? You get ambushed. Or rather, if you are my parents, they cloak you in their guidance-counselor fog and coax you into spilling the beans when you thought you had none. Add a dose of self-imposed Jewish guilt. What you end up with is the basis for a non-traditional, independent film on the second-generation immigrant experience.
One fine Sunday evening while visiting home, my dad indicates that he would like me to sit in the front seat on the way to dinner. A mere forty-five seconds into the drive, he pops the question: how do I feel about meeting people, and what am open to (or not), given that they are receiving "references" for me?
Don't ask how I failed to expect the unexpected in that particular moment. I was tempted to lash out and use my imaginary middle-child card. Instead, my inner zen erupted an unstoppable flow of lava into my veins and I answered every question calmly, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm and defeat, and perhaps a dose or two of cynicism.
The truth is, I realized I was 26 and have no more cards to pull, and that my dad was, in short, nice. All he asked is if I was open to the idea, and even worse, the truth is, I am. To me, meeting people is meeting people, as long as no one is forcibly dragging you to the altar. From here on, however, our conversation bordered on the comical and I wasn't quite sure what dimension of reality I had suddenly entered.
By the time the lava had calmed my inner nerves, I was able to muster a watery "ok" in response. Thinking he was getting away with this too easily, he soldiered on through some talking points about how "this" would work before I could tell him to beat it. "This" will involve no parental involvement, and "this" will only serve to put me in touch with a Potentially Suitable Boy (suitable for what, both parents failed to clarify, but I'll take full advantage of the ambiguity). Another watery but somewhat more flippant "ok" escaped from my mouth.
I actually began to enjoy myself with the onset of Talking Point 3 - my "preferences." Haha - what a notion! As if one can afford to have preferences in such a dire situation! As if I'm the Queen of Sheba and setting preferences is my job! I contemplated requesting a checklist of possible attributes/characteristics on which I could tick off (or better yet, rank!) what matters to me most. Only you are privileged enough to read what that is in A Suitable Boy and A Suitable Boy, Part Deux.
Some of the suggested categories: profession, geographic location, and region of India from which Potential Suitable Boy's parents hail. What happened to Ability to Understand Pinky & The Brain and The X-Files References? Or Knowledge of Early 90s Bollywood Music? Or - Does He Read Books? I nearly pulled out my cellphone and punched in a string of "hehes" and "LOLs" to my friends, but the poor guy was trying and I just had to dignify the effort. So I told him that I don't really care (which is the truth for these suggested categories). And let's be honest, this was not the time or the place to bring up the "must eat goat" requirement, which sadly trumps the "must let me pass on my maiden name to one child" requirement. If I had voiced these concerns, I'm not quite sure where we would have ended up that night - certainly not dinner, but perhaps a place to contemplate the sanity and singledom of middle daughter.
And so, I embarked into unknown territory by - being honest with my parents. I somewhat appreciated their levelheaded efforts and decided to even the exchange by telling them about 1) Family Friend Who Confessed His Feelings For Me And Who A Large Number Of People Think Is Right For Me But I Do Not (FFWCHFFMAWALNOPTIRFMBIDN) and 2) my online dating attempts. My mother giggled. My dad largely ignored me, although he did ask what was wrong with FFWCHFFMAWALNOPTIRFMBIDN. Of course, because he is one of the Large Number of People.
I have yet to write about some of my interesting online experiences, but perhaps it is time. I plan to have a side-by-side comparison with The Parent Set Up and The Online Connection, although I hesitate to write about people other than the string of cartoon characters that are my family and friends (sorry, guys). Do Potentially Suitable Boys deserve the same fate? Perhaps - we'll just have to wait and see.
On another note, it occurred to me later that on that fine Sunday evening, we were driving along the water on the north shore of Long Island - a drive my father made 10 years ago on my 16th birthday to the same restaurant for dinner. My, how time flies, and how often we travel the same paths differently...
