A true story I thought of just the other day:
My brothers and sister were long gone to college, and I, a typical sixteen-year old, disliked the resultant boring dinners with just my parents. We sat among empty chairs at the dining room table under the yellow glow of the chandelier my mother had purchased in Venice. Dinners had become unusually quiet, except for when mother and father asked too many questions or, worse, ignored me and talked about people I didn’t know -- other members of their social scene in Westport, Connecticut. I was relieved when my new boyfriend, Tyler, showed up early for our Saturday night date. My parents didn’t much like Tyler, perhaps because of his long, frizzy Peter Framptonish hair or maybe because he was a drummer in a rock band. But in walked Tyler, hair, jeans, jean jacket and all; and when my mother insisted that I finish my meal, Tyler joined us at the table.
The questions were simple: “Where are you going tonight? Who will be there?” But with their every attempt at conversation, my eyes rolled in growing annoyance and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
As I scooped up the last of my peas, preparing for my get-away, the conversation at the table halted. I followed my mother’s horrified gaze. Something was moving around in my boyfriend’s large head of hair. Up and down, peeking and pulling back, finally emerging from the mass of wiry curls was a tan and black snake. Like an alien periscope, the snake rose from the top of Tyler’s head, searching the air with its long, squiggly tongue. Curiously, it regarded my parents and the remnants of our meal. (Personally, I was unfazed, knowing that Tyler often let his pet baby boa constrictor play Garden of Eden in his hair -- I’d had to disentangle the poor snake a few times. I had even tried wearing the snake -- it’s warm, smooth movements on the back of my neck gave me a pleasant sort of queasiness. But of any of this, my parents were clueless.)
My mother shrieked, standing, knocking her chair over, pointing toward the door.
“Well this,” my father blurted, also standing, nervously passing his napkin from hand to hand. “This is, well this is unacceptable.”
Tyler reached up and grabbed the snake, painstakingly removing it from his rock-band drummer’s locks. “Oh, I forgot…” he started to say, but my mother’s frantic demands, foot-stomping, and dramatic gestures toward the door forced a quick exit..
My parents turned to me, eyes still wide from shock. I continued sitting at the dining room table, fork in hand, peas on fork. Putting the fork down, I stood to leave.
“God, Mom and Dad,” I said in my typical teenager whine, “You totally over-reacted. How embarrassing…” I grabbed my jean-jacket and huffed out of the house, taking off in the car with Tyler and his snake.
It was a short-lived romance; Tyler was my boyfriend for only four months. My parents, clearly traumatized by the encounter, to this day deny ever meeting Tyler’s snake. They do remember, however, their great dislike for him, and their tremendous relief when we soon broke-up. I wish I could say that Tyler, the snake-toting drummer, had set the boyfriend standard so low that all dates to follow were greeted with open-arms. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t whole-heartedly approve of any of my boyfriends -- that is, until I met my husband. They liked him and he was snake free!
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