My Son's First Date

November 2, 1993. I gave birth to a bouncing baby boy! Well, he wasn't really bouncing; he was a little more subdued. In fact, he was the coolest baby I'd ever encountered. He was laid back, even when he cried! The thing I remember most, his smile. Yes, at that early age, he had a smile that could light up the room. He still does.

Recently, our now 15 year old son approached me and his father (my husband) about going on a double date with a friend of his. We agreed but only after the details of the date met our specifications. It was decided, our oldest would escort a young lady from his school to the movies. As the week went on, it turned out to be a single date, but we were comfortable with it, because he is a good kid and never gives us real trouble.

Finally, the day of the FIRST date arrives, and our son is extremely nervous. However, it didn’t stop him from taking care of the final details of his date. When it was all said and done, the time and movie were set and he was on his way out of the door. Since our son asked the young lady out, we felt the need to provide transportation. In addition, it would be an opportunity to meet with the young lady’s parents. Unfortunately, the night before I was in the emergency room with a horrible ear infection and was unable to go. So, they left and like any proud mother, memories of my baby boy began to flood my mind and I realized he isn’t a baby anymore...

Ten minutes passes and my phone rings. It's my husband. I’m expecting to hear that they are on their way to the movies but instead my husband is upset and he tells me that there will be NO date today. When I asked why, I was AMAZED at what took place.

According to my son and husband, they arrived at the young lady's home and her mother was sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette and drinking. My husband approached her first, introduced himself and shook her hand, our son followed but when he went to shake her hand she extended two of her fingers. The whole time she looked him up and down as if she was sizing him up. Without any introduction of herself, she immediately states that she doesn’t know "who you people are" and she needs identification, license plate numbers and cell phone numbers.

Normally this would not be a problem.

But…profanity and yelling is not necessary.

Yes. She began every sentence with a curse word and constantly reminded my husband that she was only protecting her child. Not wanting to disappoint my son or the young lady, he decided to ignore the mother's irrational behavior and give her the information that she requested.

And then, she said...If you were a good father, you'd look out for yours too.

With that, my husband told our son to go to the truck and announced that there would be no date.That should have been the end of it. But it was not.

The mother called my daughter's phone about 45 minutes after my guys left and she began to curse at my daughter. When I took the phone I tried to reason with her, but you can't reason with irrational people. I finally had enough and decided to hang but she beat me to it and hung up on me.

My husband and I wanted our son to know that he did nothing wrong in this situation. When we were at a loss of words he said to us, that he was fine but what bothered him the most was how it seemed like she judged him before she knew anything about him. He couldn’t understand that she wasn’t interested in the fact that he was an honor student, student leader, athlete, and all around nice guy.

Then I thought about how we always tease that the first boy to come take our daughter out will be grilled! We never imagined that the boy may feel nervous or that we would come across as harsh or unreasonable. Having high expectations was something that we never thought twice about. The fact of the matter is we will still expect a lot from the people our children choose to date. However, after this experience we will definitely think about being a little more compassionate towards any young man or young lady that will escort or be escorted by our children.

After all of this, my son just shrugged his shoulders, changed his clothes and went to play football with my brother.

Kids!