My Mortifying Teenage Dating Moment

What better way to start a new year (happy 2010, everyone!) than by sharing a tale of teenage embarrassment?

Well, I'd actually meant to share this earlier in the week, but my life has been kind of chaotic (sick cats. They are on the mend, but it's been stressful) and I honestly couldn't think of an embarrassing moment to share. I was such a naturally awkward kid, you know, geeky, didn't really fit in, mocked for my clothes, that I did my best to avoid all embarrassing moments that I would read in the Oops! or some such column in YM (omg, does YM even exist? When did it stop existing? Am I really showing my age) or Seventeen-- the kinds of incident that usually involved mishaps with your period or accidentally flashing people. I never would have been brave enough to show off in front of a guy the way Wendy did. I crushed on guys quietly, secretly. Only my very best friend would know who I liked and we wrote all our notes in code, giving the boys numbers instead of names so as not to risk an accidental reveal of our crushes. Then it hit me, I *did* have an embarrassing boy moment! I must have been blocking it out! (And I'm sure I'm blocking out many other embarrassing moments, so I hope this doesn't bring them all back or I might need therapy.)

It was actually the kind of moment that could have been made into a sitcom episode. It's the moment that they always show teenage girls dreading on TV... when your parents go, "Oh, you're dating someone?" And you go, "Um, we don't use the words, like, dating. I'm sort of kind of seeing someone...." But that doesn't really help matters, nor does your request for an extended curfew and your parents go, "Well, we need to meet him before you can go out with him."

Yeah, the first boyfriend situation. It happened fall of my sophomore year of high school. Like my character Kara from Ballads of Suburbia, I didn't really get a social life until then. I only had one or two friends, but then I suddenly started meeting people and hanging out at this park called Scoville (yeah, I know it sounds familiar but I swear Ballads isn't just a fictionalized version of my life. Kara and I went through different kinds of drama.) And my best friend met this guy in her history class, for privacy's sake we will call him Bryan, and when she introduced us he really liked me and his friend (who we'll call Sam) really liked my friend and it seemed like something straight out of a TV show, perfect, like finally my life was really happening. Oh and Sam had a car. It was awesome.

But then I told my parents about it. And they insisted that if I was going to go out with boys in a car and stay out later than usual, they needed to meet the boys. I was mortified. I finally was making friends, cool friends that I wanted to keep, and I had a boyfriend, a guy that had pursued me rather than me quietly lusting over him for months the way all my crushes had worked in the past. And now I had to tell them that before we could go anywhere they had to come in and meet my lame lame lame parents????

Like I said, embarrassing in the way that many teen girls get embarrassed in books, movies and TVs all the time. It's almost a rite of passage. But was more embarrassing was the guys' reaction. I tried to be all cool about it and they didn't seem to care about having to come in and meet the fam. But instead of us all standing around awkwardly like it tends to go on TV, Bryan and Sam started chasing my thirteen year old brother around the living room, making ape noises and pretending to pick lice off of him and of each other!!!!! WHAT???? I don't know *why* my parents let me go out with them after that. I didn't know who to be more embarrassed for my parents, the guys, my brother or myself. *Sigh* Seriously, this could only happen to me. Only I would have my first date with a guy who would chase my little brother around acting like a monkey. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that the relationship only lasted three weeks....

What about you? How was your very first introduce boyfriend/girlfriend to parents moment? Normal weird? Or pretend-lice-eating-monkey weird? Can you top my story?

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