Meeting The Parents...All of them.

Ah, meeting the parents. How can you not find humor in that no matter what your story is? Whole movies have been made on the topic, and of course, they are comedies. This post will highlight a few of the lighter moments of when we had to meet the parents. After all, how awkward could meeting the parents be?



My previous post left off when I was about to meet Courtney’s Mom Marie for the first time. Looking back, the encounter was as I would expect it to go. For those who know Marie, you know that she is a “hugger”. This means if you enter a room with her and share even the slightest hint of a conversation with her, you will get hugged when you make your exit. If you have met before, you will get a hello hug, and a good bye hug, and maybe a hug in the middle just for good measure. I love this about her, but was not given the rule book on this prior to meeting her. She was at Courtney’s apt helping her do some spring cleaning of Courtney’s clothes. By spring cleaning, I mean get rid of enough clothes to take care of the country of Zaire for a good 9 months. Yet, her closet seemed to be full still. It is an amazing gift of stuffing that men will never quite fully grasp. Give me a hammer, some power tools and a 6 pack, and I can redo your entire kitchen. Closet organization? No chance.

I don’t remember all the details of that meeting, but I remember knocking on the door and then getting the dreaded, “Come in!” Just so we are clear on this, no one wants to self enter an apartment when you are meeting a parent for the first time. You are already mentally trying to deal with enough stuff, that having to address whatever might await you on the other side of the door does not need to be added to that mix. Mind Chaos happens. “What If I see her mom before I see her? How do I introduce myself? Boyfriend? Friend? Just Jon? We haven’t had “the talk” to determine if we were “exclusive” or not, so skip the boyfriend thing. Maybe friend? But then she might think I am gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that, well actually…the bible says…doh focus! Maybe Courtney will be there to handle the introduction…” At this moment I turn the corner of her stairs and wah lah…Marie is standing there. More mind chaos. “Ah crap. Where the heck is Courtney?! Her mom is right there and I have never met her before. Should I take the stairs 1 at a time or 2. 1 would indicate relaxed and deliberate. 2 would signal I am fit and healthy… but too eager? Ah hell. Holy smokes that is a smile!? She is one happy lady…” She sticks out her hand and introduces herself as “Marie, Courtney’s mom”. I am pretty sure I just shook her hand and said “It is nice to meet you, I’m Jon”. Where the hell is Courtney?! Finally from her bedroom I hear Courtney say she is coming. She apparently was putting the final touches on that whole “Save Zaire” foundation she was about to start.

So we had our nice little awkward chit chat about the weather, or the humidity outside, or how to best brew coffee…again, no idea. I finally move to sit down on the couch and Courtney eventually joins me on the couch. Marie at this point got a bit flustered cause I know that she really wanted to stay but didn’t want to intrude and so she asked me if I wanted a beer. The answer to this question is always yes. Then with a few hyper all run into one string of thoughts Marie said “Is it alright if I stay? I don’t want to intrude? I should go, maybe I should go.” Courtney told her mom not to go and to sit and chat. So within about 5 minutes of meeting Marie, we were sitting on the couch drinking beer and probably discussing the finer details and implications of the 3 laws of thermodynamics. At least that is what I imagine we talked about. All I was thinking the whole time was; her mom drinks beer, and gave me a beer. This is good. No complaints! Little did I know that this little meeting would be a preview to the rest of my life!

The next time I saw Marie was when I went over to their house one weekend. Hugs all around this time, because we had already met once! I got to meet Rick, and Courtney’s friend Sarah from Kansas City. It was a regular introduction fest for Jon. Yeah! I am pretty sure we had gone through a pitcher of Marie's Margaritas when somehow the time line between when my ex and I split up to when Courtney and I started chatting online came up. Needless to say, this amount of time was not sufficient in Marie’s mind after leaving a 1.5 year relationship. She asked with a bit of desperation in her voice, "So wait, Courtney is a rebound?" My straight faced answer, because I just couldn’t resist the moment was, “absolutely.” I wish I could have videotaped this moment because I am pretty sure Marie had some awesome mind chaos going on. “Wait. What? Is he serious? But I liked this guy, he seemed so good, but now he is just looking to rebound from that relationship…a year and half is long time. But Courtney seems happy, but I don’t know. This was going so well and…I need another margarita…really? He is just joking…but still..Oh my gosh! This can’t be happening! My only girl is a rebound!!! Why me god? Why me!....” At some point Courtney noticed this and calmed her mom down to explain that essentially, I am just a brat and I just wanted to see the reaction I would get. This is essentially true. Not gonna deny it, and to this day, I can’t say it’s changed a whole lot.

At this same gathering, Courtney’s friend Emie, who took us to that original Texans game was there and had just gotten engaged and was planning a wedding. Apparently she was frustrated with the amount on her to do list, and so Marie out of the kindness of her heart offered to help her out. So she went and got the wedding planning book she had and brought it to the table to help her. I know I kind of glazed by that. Let me explain what my mind was thinking. ”Holy smokes! This lady already has a wedding planning book? Did she buy that like yesterday?! Courtney and I have only been dating for like a few weeks! What have I gotten into!” I believe what I managed to stumble out was, “um, why do you have a wedding planner?” Again, I wish you could of watched the facial expression on Marie’s face. It went from utter joy and happiness to seeing my face, hearing my question to “oh crap, this is giving him the wrong impression”. At this point, I am not sure anything she could of said would have been a good enough explanation, and when you are trying to explain something like that away in a logical fashion, you really only manage to dig a deeper hole then you are already in and eventually just give up, sigh, and move on. I’m pretty sure Courtney was just laughing the whole time at both of us.

And then I had to go visit the other parents. Ah, the Kansas City family.
Before we go to KC, Courtney informs me that her KC family has never met a person she has been dating. Again, for emphasis, never. So this is about how I imagined this little encounter was going to go:



So we got on the large coke can with wings that they call a plane to fly to KC and set out on this adventure. It was thanksgiving break, and I knew we were going to be going to a family thanksgiving reunion of sorts as was their tradition. No problem. So we got off the plane late Wednesday night, and essentially that night can be summarized in this; “nice to meet you, we are so excited you were able to come down. We have a 3 hour car ride tomorrow and we are leaving really early. Goodnight!” What you don’t know is that the KC crew are giants. They are all 6’ plus, and we weren’t making this trek in a Tahoe. Nope. A Chrysler 300. Basically a fancy Taurus, with 5 adults. At this point, this is what I am preparing for in my head the next day:





The trip was 3 hours there and 3 hours back. So we drove for 6 hours and we only spent about 1.5 hours at the place we were at. That isn’t what I remember most though. What I remember the most about this trek through the middle of Kansas was that Kansas had hills! What the crap! Houston is flatter than Kansas! Whoever said that the surface of a pancake as more hills than the surface of Kansas obviously has not been to Houston, because he would of said that about Houston rather than Kansas. This is greatly disturbing. I am still bothered by this fact today.

On this same KC trip, we managed to get tickets to go to a basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse, home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. Now for sports fans, KU is where basketball was invented; it is akin to the mecca of basketball. This is like getting to go to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park to see a baseball game. I was all over this. This was turning out to be an awesome little trip. Little did I know the experience that was waiting me. Now I understand that almost every University has their weird quirks and “traditions”, but only a few have reached the infamous cult status. Living in Houston, I am surrounded by the Gig’em Cult aka Texas A&M and the Hook’em Cult aka University of Texas. I was about to be endoctrined into the inner workings of…the Beak’em Cult. Yes, that is correct, they use the term Beak’em.

Now again, if you are a sports fan, you have probably heard of the famous Rock Chalk cheer that KU has. It is supposedly the most intimidating college cheer there is. So they do this little “cheer” before every game. I’ll let you judge for yourself:



Rock Chalk Jayhawk...

Don’t ask me what the little hand signs are when they do the chant. I have no clue. Don’t ask them what Rock Chalk is. It is better that you don’t know. Don’t ask me what a Jayhawk is. For that matter, don’t ask Kansas what a Jayhawk is, and I am still trying to figure out why he has pilgrim shoes on…

Now you just watched a video of this little “ritual”. I had to be in the stands to experience the full brunt force of this trauma. Truth be told, I could only think of one thing the whole time they did this:



Now having said all that, of course I picked KU to win this years March Madness, and yes, I own a shirt that says The Fighting Manginos, (Google Mark Mangino if you don’t get this reference) because at least they can make fun of themselves! Or at least I hope that is what they are doing…So I am now a KU fan by marriage, which actually works out well. Everyone knows I am a USC Trojan fan, and come football season, it is very easy to root for USC and not have a lot of conflict with KU football, “A tradition since October” as one sign read during their miracle Orange Bowl run in 2008. Come Basketball season, USC is excited to just make the tourney, KU is disappointed if they didn’t make the Final Four. So it all works out well. When push comes to shove though, I'll take Traveler as a mascot over the Jayhawk. Is that a onesie the KU guy is wearing?

If only I could get them to reconsider the Waving of the Wheat as a celebration. Wait, you don’t know the Waving of the Wheat? Well let's let KU enlighten you on this intimidating celebration…



Notice the part where they say "no one knows when this tradition started." I can only imagine this started when they tried to start the wave, but had one too many adult beverages in the 4th qtr (cause that is probably how long it took KU to score!) and so the ensuing chaos of unorganized waving resulted in what you see in the video. Someone more sober (or the opposite) than the others probably said it looks like wheat fields…and thus…Waving of the Wheat was born. Sad really. Alas, it is now a part of my family and I embrace it with all the passion I can muster. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

Needless to say, I couldn’t be more happy about the new family I have. Meeting my Family was less adventurous in a funny story kind of way. We went to visit my brother in Vegas over that Christmas. The joke here is that I have family in Hawaii, Southern California, and Vegas (well, I did at the time) and she has family in Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska. Pretty sure she married me for my family.

I couldn’t be happier with my new family. I know there will be more stories in the future! But the real reason I went up to KC was to meet the parents before I had to pop the question. But before I got to that, I had to buy a ring.

Who knows anything about buying a ring?!

Phew…for another day then…

Jon