CHAPTER ELEVEN: Dinner Date - With Kids

My #relationship with Allen had progressed to the going-steady phase.  It sounds harsh but in the beginning I'd continued to date him because I had nothing else to do.  After a while, though, he started to grow on me.  He was such a gentle, kind, genuinely nice guy.  He was also fond of extended kissing sessions, especially after I told him we both had to have AIDS tests before we could move beyond that.

Andrea and Bronwyn hadn’t met Allen yet, but often saw the physical evidence of our time together. 

“Mom, you’ve got beard burn again!” they would comment reproachfully when I opened the door to them after their weekend visitations with their dad.  “Eeuuw, gross!”

The first time Allen spoke to the girls was during an evening phone call.  I’d avoided introducing him to them because I was terrified that he wouldn’t want to date me for long once he discovered what hyperactive, manic, little terrors they could be at times.

Meanwhile, I built them up to be some kind of super children – probably not a wise tactic.  While Andrea and Bronwyn could be trusted to be on their best behavior for a while, high spirits wouldn’t allow them to keep it up for long.  It was just a matter of time, and then Allen would surely witness the squabbles of intense sibling rivalry and the effect that these had on their impatient, low-frustration-tolerant mother, who, when she’d had enough, was prone to give a good imitation of a shrieking harpy.

And so it was that I greatly lauded Andrea’s sweet shyness, sense of humor, and gymnastics and dancing prowess, and Bronwyn’s vivacious personality, clever tongue, and talent for making funny faces.   Being that Allen was a scientist, I also delighted in describing how Bronwyn was gifted with a superior intellect for math and science and wanted to be a chemical engineer when she grew up.  Neither she, nor I, had the faintest idea what a chemical engineer actually did.

Anyway, Andrea answered the phone that night, but was too shy to make much of an impression.  She quickly passed the phone to me. 

Bronwyn, however, was hankering to say hello.  When I handed her the phone, the first thing she said to Allen was, “I’m interesting to talk to.  Don’t you want to talk to me?”  She then proceeded to chatter away to this man she had never met, which at least confirmed to Allen the validity of my enthusiastic description of her outgoing personality and sense of humor.

The next test – now I had caught the bug from Allen – was to have him meet the girls in person.  We met at a nearby #Pizza Hut.  Pizza was Andrea’s favorite food, so I’d avoid the inevitable challenge of trying to get her to eat vegetables.  Bronwyn, on the other hand, was quite happy to load up on the salad bar, which should impress the fruit-and-veggie-loving Allen.

On the way to Pizza Hut, I made dire threats to my daughters to be on their best behavior and implored Bronwyn to be especially careful around liquids.  She was prone to spilling containers full of drink on a fairly regular basis.  Her most famous and dramatic accomplishment was when she knocked over an entire pitcher of Coke at a busy Chuck E Cheese restaurant.  The pitcher exploded like a bomb, drenching our pizza and splashing everyone in close proximity.

“Is that Allen?” Bronwyn asked, trying to change the subject as we pulled into the Pizza Hut parking lot. “He looks just like Daddy!”

“Oh, no!  Hardly!” I exclaimed.  “Must be the beard.”

Dinner went quite well.  The girls chatted to Allen about school, Andrea talked about gymnastics, and Bronwyn executed math equations on napkins and asked interested questions about Allen’s science lab. 

Towards the end of the meal, however, the conversation began to deteriorate somewhat when Andrea described with relish how Bronwyn had once vomited scrambled egg all over the back seat of my car, just as we were pulling into the parking lot of a liquor store where I had an appointment to give a sales presentation.  Since Bronwyn didn’t seem to be any the worse for wear after her explosive purging, the girls had to wait in the car, enduring the smell of sick and mopping up the curdled mess with paper towels donated by the surprised liquor store owner, while I made my sales pitch. 

Whether from sympathy, or due to my incredible talent for sales, the owner quickly signed on the dotted line.  Hoping the girls had managed to clean up the worst of the vomit, I trotted back to my smelly car and resigned myself to spending an evening with a large bottle of fabric shampoo.

Anyway, back to Pizza Hut . . . after the vomit story, the girls’ high spirits began to break through and things started getting a bit rowdy.  It was time to leave.  Fortunately, Allen had apparently enjoyed his first experience of my children, and they seemed to approve of him.  We parted in the parking lot, with Allen inviting Bronwyn to tour his lab some day to try interesting experiments with liquid nitrogen.

            My euphoria over our successful dinner with Allen lasted a couple of days until two a.m. one morning, when I received a phone call from my downstairs #tenant, Greg.