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.