I respect myself. Do you?
11:19 a.m.
When I was a teenager (the exact age that my daughter is now) I had a boyfriend. There are many similarities between Little Princess and me, especially relating to our schedules of maturation and rites of passage. I knew she would be a late toilet user because I was. I predicted to the minute when she would stop sucking her thumb, because that�s how it went with me. She started menstruating earlier than I did, but the night before she got her first period, I dreamed of the event. She was 11 years and 5 months, while I had been 11 years and 10 months. I lost my virginity when I was 17, and so did she. There are quite a few basic differences between her boyfriend and the one I had at the equivalent time in my life, but there is one very basic similarity:
The guy is always here.
Let me be a little more illustrative. I was dating a guy who was four years my senior (I was 17, he was 21). He was a musician of sorts, unemployed, living at home with his parents, and a chronic liar. I wouldn�t say it was compulsive, and he certainly did know the difference between truth and fiction, but he lied anyway about things that were enormous, such as that he was adopted and don�t say anything to his parents because they were sensitive, etc., and I, being the impressionable and in-love girl that I was, didn�t cotton on for quite a while. We actually got engaged when I turned 18, and broke up when I turned 19 when the truth outed and I realized I was making a HUGE mistake.
My lovely daughter has had her boyfriend for over a year now. He is actually a year younger than she is, but he is also unemployed (having just graduated from high school, which is the equivalent of grade 11 here) for the summer, and spends his days cavorting with Little Princess and his nights crashing at various friends� in town. His own home is a 45-minute drive SSW very near the Vermont border, and there is absolutely nothing for a young man to do out there. Hence, he shows up at our dinner table several times a week these days. The similarity between this and my own erstwhile fianc� is overwhelming. My mother was a consummate hostess, never turned this guy away, and just set another plate and added water to the soup (in a manner of speaking). My father was none too pleased by this constant visitor but kept his opinions to himself, and my brother (the one I am not speaking to, or I should say is not speaking to me) actually despised my boyfriend, although at the time he never said anything but chose 25 years later to inform me of this (as though it were my fault).
Now Hubby and I find ourselves in the same position as my parents, with this young fellow gracing our table every few days. Unlike my old boyfriend, this BF is actually a pretty well-balanced individual with no discernible psychological problems, apart from youth, and always thanks me for the meal and for having him. Last night before he left he actually thanked me for putting up with him, which was kind of novel. Like us, BF is a vegetarian. Unlike us, he doesn�t eat fish. I have managed every time he comes over to prepare a vegan or lacto-ovo meal, even if that wasn�t what I had planned. But last night I decided that he was no stranger and I wasn�t going to go out of my way for him, especially since I had more than a serving left in the fridge of the bulgur, saut�ed vegetables and black beans that we had had the night before without him. So for the rest of us I barbecued salmon steaks and made hot-buttered orzo (I�ll post that recipe some other time), and a salad. Everyone had enough to eat, I was happy, he was happy, and then he and Little Princess did the dishes and I escaped to watch Bubba Ho-tep.
This is the movie Hubby rented the night before last when we couldn�t see The Day After Tomorrow, but I was too tired to watch. It�s one of those low-budget Bruce Campbell films, and it shows. Bruce Campbell plays an old guy in a Shady Rest Retirement Home somewhere in Texas. He goes by the name Sebastian Haff, who was the greatest Elvis impersonator around. But in reality he is Elvis, who had traded places with Haff when he found that his life was becoming a drag (after his marriage soured, etc.). Unfortunately, Haff had a bad heart and died on the job, hence the world mourned The King, and the real Elvis continued impersonating himself until he fell off a stage and broke a hip, ending up in a coma and then in a convalescence home.
In this story, he and another resident who is convinced that he is President Kennedy have to save the nursing home from an escaped mummy who is sucking the souls of the old geezers, leaving them dead and soulless. They are successful, but pay the ultimate price themselves in the process. Anyway, the movie was about self respect.
And on that merry note, I will try to get the white box to show up again so I can post this thing.
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