When Your Parents Try to Set You up with Someone You’ve Just Met

Do I look desperate?  Is my dating life really that pathetic?  These are the questions I asked myself after a particularly embarrassing encounter at my little brother’s college… 

Let me set the scene:  It’s pouring rain, the skies are grey, and my brother is moving in as a freshman at his college.  I came along for the ride, and to make sure everything gets properly set up and organized in his new room.  Despite my efforts to look like a normal human being, I have frizzy hair from the rain, my clothes are soaked, and I am tired from the long, early morning drive.  My family and I are waiting at the admissions building for a few umbrellas, when this random guy walks up from nowhere.  Apparently, he was the tour guide on my brother’s initial campus tour, because my parents recognize him and start greeting him like he is their long-lost son.

This is awkward for several reasons.  First, why do they care about him so much?  Like, they met him once.  Took a tour with him for probably less than an hour.  They are excitedly greeting him like he is the prodigal returned home.  I can’t understand why all this familiarity is happening.  Second, he is kind of cute (not like d-bag cute, but clean-cut cute.  This distinction is important).  Third, I am looking pretty wretched at this point.  So I’m not exactly stunning as I walk into the admissions building in my wet clothes. 

After this slightly uncomfortable meeting happens and I am introduced to this semi-cute stranger, said stranger generously offers to give us a tour of the recreation center since it is raining outside.  And how could we ever say no? Says my overly-excited father. 

Instead of taking the golf cart over, my father offers to drive us all there.  He fails to take into account the fact that we have a small, five-person car.  Can you picture it?  Mother and father in the front seat.  And in the back, my brother, me, and semi-cute stranger, who decides to sit right in the middle.  So it’s a semi-cute stranger sandwich.   

Semi-cute stranger (we’ll call him SCS for short) then asks me a series of questions, including “where do you go to school? What’s your major?  What year are you?”  And so on.  All of this would be perfectly normal, except for the fact that we are squished together in a tiny car and are mere inches away from each other’s face.  Good thing I flossed today, I think to myself.  My obnoxious father then asks SCS about his summer and SCS tells us about his mission trip to Canada where he helped inner city kids learn about Jesus and oh, he definitely feels called to pastor a church in the inner city, no doubt about that.  You better believe my father is just beaming like crazy and giving me the eye through the rearview mirror.  SERIOUSLY?

Later, after the recreation center tour, we are about to leave when my father starts talking about my trip to England like it’s his job.  He makes sure to tell SCS that I am leaving soon and would he please pray for my safe travels?  YEAH, LET ME JUST ASK FOR YOUR MOST HEARTFELT PRAYERS SINCE WE MET APPROXIMATELY TWO MINUTES AGO. 

Thank you, father, for making me feel desperate and sufficiently awkward.  I appreciate your earnest interest in my love life, but you just ruined it.  Besides, I won’t date and/or marry an aspiring pastor.  I’m not spiritual enough for that…

 

 

 

 

 

Sick on a Beautiful September Day

Things that are awful:

1.      The inability to breathe properly.

2.      Feeling cold on a sunny, 80 degree day.

3.      Repeatedly wiping your nose with dry, itchy toilet paper.

Not that I’m trying to have a pity party, but I’m feeling pretty miserable due to my frenzied sinuses.  I’ll never understand what is it about fall that makes my nose produce so much mucus… it’s revolting.  Doctors say it’s the pollen count in the air; I say it’s a conspiracy.  My nose secretly hates me and is attempting to drown me by the mass production of phlegm in my throat.  However, this doesn’t faze me.   I’ve had this problem since early high school, when my nose executed its first revolt.  You could say I’m used to it.

 ...

I am currently listening to Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op.30.  It’s pretty epic.  It’s helping me get through this sick day.  The dramatic crescendos and crashing chords are taking me to another world, a world where my only asset is my ears, and my only purpose is to listen.  I’ve always loved Sergey Rachmaninov (or “Serg”, as I affectionately call him).  There’s something mysterious and angry about his music.  Gotta love that.  

 

Such a babe.  Seriously.

 

I was first introduced to the Rach as a freshman in high school, when my piano teacher at the time handed me the sheet music for his Prelude in C Sharp Minor.  Initially, my fifteen year old self laughed at the thought of playing something with so many double sharps.  But I wanted to learn it because it was challenging and I hated to disappoint my teacher.  It wasn’t long after that before I fell deeply in love with the piece.  Moody and tense, the Prelude in C Sharp Minor is still one of my favorite pieces to perform; in fact, it was one of my college audition pieces.  Sophomore year of high school, I tackled the Prelude in G Minor.  It was quite a challenge, and it definitely stretched me musically.  I remember spending hours at the piano trying to figure out those darned left hand intricacies.  After performing that piece at my sophomore recital, I received a mini statue of Serg himself from my piano teacher.  For a while, he sat proudly on the mantle of my piano, staring me down during the hours I spent slaving over his complicated music.  It kinda gave me the creeps, to be honest.  Plus, it was awkward to have the composer himself staring at me while I butchered his music in practice sessions.  It just didn’t feel right.  So, I did what any self-respecting musician would do – I started talking to the statue. 

“Daaang!  How am I supposed to play that chord with one hand?  Sorry my left hand doesn’t span an entire octave and a half, Serg.  Get real.”

Obviously, he never talked back.  But in my mind, he was constantly throwing out insulting comments, criticism, and the occasional witty comeback.  He was Sassy Serg, actually. 

Now, Serg sits in my bedroom on a shelf surrounded by other random things, including a red foam finger from NCC homecoming, a plastic doll, and a framed picture of me when I was five.  Hopefully, those items are enough to keep him company.  Just to make sure he isn’t too lonely, I placed my mini statue of Bach right next to him.  I realize that they are from two completely different musical eras.  But who knows?  They say opposites attract.  Maybe they have riveting, intelligent musical discussions while I’m away at college. 

Apparently he was a dog lover.