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Boyfriend's just right for her, wrong for a column
© St. Petersburg Times "But you never write about him," she said. I thought about it for a while. Finally I admitted the truth, in an almost sorrowful tone of voice. "He's, well . . . normal," I said, explaining that normal people are great to have in our lives, but not always good column material. This kid, to the best of my knowledge, has no quirks, no discernible vices and does not get himself into complex situations requiring physical, financial or emotional rescue. A year or so ago I found myself in the position most fathers would relish. A place of business was calling me for a reference on my stepdaughter's boyfriend. The evil troll that lives deep inside me started urging me to shout replies like: "We were truly amazed when his treatment for substance abuse also cured his kleptomania," or "He'd make a great employee as long as his job doesn't require things like long division or the ability to operate a telephone." But I resisted the urges and just told the truth. "He is," I said, "the kind of kid you hope your daughter will bring home some day." He is friendly, funny, even-tempered, extremely responsible, devoted to my stepdaughter and supportive of her career as an artist. See what I mean? Great kid. Dudsville as a column. You want to see your boyfriend in print? Get me a kid with a spiked green Mohawk, a safety pin through his cheek, $10,000 worth of bass speakers in his trunk and a tendency to put his feet on the coffee table. Now there is a boyfriend to conjure with. This one is reliable, punctual and friendly, and he makes allowances for the foibles of previous generations. He actually pretends in conversations with me that he has heard of the Grateful Dead. He does have a pierced lip, but since he entered the world of real jobs a while back, he doesn't wear the thingamabob in it anymore. One morning a couple of years ago I was backing out of my carport at an uncharacteristically early hour when I heard the kind of crunching sound you never want to hear while backing up. I had backed into, and crumpled the engine cover on, the vintage Volkswagen Beetle that he had just finished restoring a few days earlier. The rental van I was driving wasn't damaged, and a part of me of which I am not proud thought momentarily of just driving on and expressing horror later on that some (other) miscreant had done the damage and not had the decency to stop. But my better part won out and I awoke him, very apologetically, to tell him what I had done. "It's okay," he said, as we walked outside, "let's just take a look at it." It had to be heartbreaking for him, surveying the damage to what I later learned was a hard-to-replace part, and I continued to apologize. "You didn't do it on purpose," he said. "Things happen sometimes." And that was the sum total of the conversation. In fact, the only real failing he has is his honesty. He had begged off helping my stepdaughter and me move furniture one day because he was going sailing, so we were surprised to see his car in the driveway when we pulled up in a U-Haul. "You came here instead of going sailing," said my stepdaughter, throwing her arms around him. "It turned out the sailing trip wasn't going to happen anyway," he said. I took him aside to explain to him how seldom we guys fall into a verbal advantage like that and what the correct, if not entirely truthful, nonanswer should have been. "But that wouldn't be true," he said as I ran away screaming and waving my arms. Occasionally, though, he shows promise. During a spirited discussion one night in which he was on the losing side, he finally recalled another piece of advice I had given him and lifted his gaze to a corner of the room and pointed, saying, "Look, something shiny," and made his exit. I haven't given up hope yet. 'I thought you liked Chris," my stepdaughter, always one for the provocative conversation starter, said the other night, referring to her boyfriend. "I do," I said, truthfully.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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