Meet the Parents

I invited Jenny to come to Ojai and meet my parents. Ojai is a small town of about 8,000 people, up the coast about an hour and a half from Los Angeles. Coincidently, it turned out that she already had plans to be in Ojai that very same weekend to celebrate her brother’s engagement to his longtime girlfriend.

I pick Jenny up on Saturday morning and drive up the 101. We arrive at my parents’ house in time for brunch, which consisted of fresh fruit and pocket pancakes (think crepes cooked into balls).

After brunch, I play the part of chili apprentice. My father does not cook much, but with chili he is an artist. His philosophy on the subject borders on the paradoxical: add spices to taste, but not so much that you can taste the spice. This is particularly important when adding unusual flavors, like chocolate.

After eating, we settle down for an afternoon of playing games. We start with Bananagrams (think scrabble without a board or the strict rules). For some reason, my father doesn’t like to play, but he will sit next to my mother and advise her. He is helpful, but somehow still doesn’t seem to give her an unfair advantage.

To include him more directly, we switch to playing Apples to Apples, where the goal is to match the noun cards in your hand with the adjective card on the table. The judge then picks the best match and the winner gets a point and the role of judge moves to the next person. Although the options are limited by the cards in your hand, my father does very well.

In games like this, my mother has the sense not to be too confined by the rules. She respects the general structure of the game, but will openly lobby the judge for her selection or trade cards with others. If she did this to win, it would be weird or unsportsmanlike. But she does it to remind us that this is just a game, and it as with any game, is important to have fun. I am very pleased that Jenny seems to appreciate and enjoy this approach.

After Appling ourselves silly, it is time for Jenny to go join her family’s celebration. I walk her over to the future in-laws and agree to come in and join them for the pre-party. I recognize Jenny’s brother and soon-to-be sister in-law, but everyone else is new, including Jenny’s father.

As we are sitting around the living room, getting to know each other, they learn that I am a federal prosecutor and that I met Jenny on eHarmony. While meeting people online has largely lost its stigma for the younger generation, it seems to make the older generation is still a little uncomfortable with the idea of finding love in cyberspace.

In response, we try to make up a new story for how we met. After a little bit of brainstorming, we settle on the following: Jenny was called for jury duty and I was the prosecutor on the case. Knowing that her beauty would distract me during trial, I used a preemptory challenge to dismiss her from the jury, but got her phone number on the way out of the courtroom. I like this story because it can be further embellished by adding to the questions in voir dire, such as “are you single?” and “what do you like to do for fun?”

Somehow it seems fitting to have a fictional story for how we met to go with the fictional agency that approved our relationship.

Gavin