Meet the Parents

"Meeting the parents" can be a very stressful interaction. However, the one thing no one bothers to prepare for is the first time your brother meets your girlfriends grandparents.

While my brother, his girlfriend and I were driving back from Michigan, we made a stop in New York to have dinner with her grandparents. Upon answering the door, her grandfather said "Hi, I am Bill and this is my wife, Margaret."

We sat down to a nice dinner and as old folks do, the grandparents got to talking and telling all sorts of stories. Bill punctuated each of his anecdotes by saying "Isn't that right, Mark?" I nodded politely and continued to eat the free food, happy that Bill wanted to include me in the conversation. This continued for some time as Bill rambled his way through retelling after retelling of tales from his younger years, always fact checking his historical accuracy by saying "Right, Mark?"

Now, you are probably well ahead of me on this one and know that he was not saying Mark, but was using a precious little pet name for his beloved wife, Marg, and he was pronouncing the "G" as in "Good going!" and not "G" as in "Gee, I wonder if he is going to embarrass me in any way, shape or form at this dinner?" I had never heard this pronunciation at any prior point in my life.

Because I am self-absorbed with a spotty attention span, this entire time I had thought Bill had been saying my name and of all of the times I could have chosen to finally illicit some acknowledgement, I picked the wrong one. Bill walked over to the fridge and after shuffling a few thing around said "Marg, where's the butter?" Having been snapped out of the spell cast by the scrumptious supper, in a very confused tone I said "I.......couldn't tell you."

They both looked at me with carefree, unmasked judgement that old age allows and I decided it best that I not say anything else for the remainder of the meal.

As much as I hate to reach the end of this story and provide you with a moral that you probably could have given me at the beginning here's the deal: In my lifetime, I performed admirably as Left Wing for the Salem Saints hockey team, I walk into a Buffalo Wild Wings and management there immediately calls their distributors to adjust accordingly for the immense hit that there in stock items are about to take (a fact that I am dang proud of). However, I am not and will never claim to be the greatest wing man in the world.

If the Shoe Fits

I have sank to a new low in my life.

I looked at the shoe rack in my basement and came to the horrifying realization that I can no longer count the pairs of shoes I own on two hands as I am now the out of control owner of 11 different pairs of footwear. I can blame part of that on my move to the city as having trash pickup made it necessary to have a pair of shoes I could slip on and off. My job also made it mandatory to wear a pair of slip-resistant shoes (judging by the effectiveness of these, I'm guessing they tested them out by having a tightrope walking Buddhist Monk Black Belt put them on and walk across some pavement that someone had spilled some water from a pipette onto......"yeah, they're good.") I also have a pair of running shoes that haven't been touched since high school, but are there to look good in case company shows up. Otherwise, they serve as a "Remember your non-lazy self?" on a shelf. Undoubtedly this admission of guilt has split people into one of two camps, neither of which bodes well for me, because right now you are either thinking "HA! LOSER!" or you have the attitude of any of the anabolic enthusiasts with a work schedule that causes them to share a gym time slot with me as these people have a tendency to look at my greatest athletic efforts and think "aw, that's cute."

(I Scream, You Scream) We All Scream for.....

I have been on the road driving behind antique cars and in front of cops, but by far, the weirdest array of emotions came a few days ago when I was driving behind an ice cream truck for a solid twenty minutes. It was weird for me because I noticed in two separate areas the truck had printed on it the phrase “watch for children.” I don’t know at what point something meant to be attention grabbing and informative becomes unnecessary and awkward, but for me, that number is apparently two. It doesn’t matter who your products target demographic is, that seems to be a little much. After a while, it got hot out and I started to want some ice cream, but I didn’t have any cash so I thought about what would happen if I tried to rob them with nothing, but a pair of keys, a sideways baseball cap and the first ever carjacking with the opening line of “excuse me, but if it’s not too much trouble......” but I have this fear that ice cream trucks are all retired converted military vehicles and my unconvincing assault will be met with someone from behind the counter shoving a bazooka in my face. I don’t know where this deep desire of mine came from to hold them up for a few hoodsie cups, because I never played violent video games games growing up, I played Madden and NHL, so my best bet would be to hop in a genetics lab and create a team of employees that all have customer service, speed and dessert knowledge overall ratings of 99% and demolish the competition. Unfortunately, I remembered that driving is a “full attention” task for me and I don’t do well when it is hot out and any ice cream man who glances in his rear view mirror to see someone pouring sweat with this intense look on their face has probably already called for backup