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I have guard duty tonight. Yes, guard duty. I know I don't resemble GI Joe. I'm a matronly looking, 45-year-old woman who wears relaxed-fit jeans and arch supports, and clips coupons.
But I, along with thousands of other women, will take on Mission Impossible, putting our lives on the line for those we love. We bear the standard, we carry the flag of virtue, honor, and discipline. We are the few, the proud, the paranoid.
We are the mothers of teenage daughters with boyfriends.
In my day—do I find myself saying that more and more?—this was the father's arena. My dad relished the role, putting the fear of God into the few who were foolhardy enough to take me bowling. To this day, I tell him the only reason I married at all was because my parents moved far away during my senior year, when I met the tall, thin boy who was to become my husband.
When I turned 16 (the biblical age of dating accountability—look it up in Song of Songs), my mother and father remodeled the house. Parents of teens often do this. Many add family rooms or finish basements, furnishing them with ping-pong tables, video games, CD players, and refrigerators full of carefully selected non-nutritious food.
"We want to keep our kids and their crowd around so we can get to know their friends better" is the usual motivation. My father felt the same way. That's why he designed his own holding cell and interrogation room.
"Why's your dad wearing a pellet pistol on his hip?" asked one young man, a poor unfortunate who'd fallen in love with my sister.
"That shows he's in a good mood," she answered.
"It does?"
"Oh, yes. Usually he carries the shotgun with him when I bring home a guy."
I digress. My point is, it used to be the dad's function to make life miserable for his dating daughters. Now I'm left by myself to do the dirty work, since my husband seems disgustingly unworried about the whole deal.
My father did a background check on every male under the age of 50 who delivered dry cleaning or cottage cheese to our house. Even the neighborhood Dairy Fairy ice cream truck driver wasn't immune to his scrutiny.
"Always got to check," my father would say. "How do I know he doesn't belong to the Hatchet Murderers of America?"
My husband (can you believe this?) says the Hatchet Murderers of America probably doesn't exist. "Besides, our two girls have good judgment," he declares. "They'll make good choices."
If he'd been reading his proper quota of parenting magazines, he'd be aware that in order to make good choices, teenagers need a clear-cut, simple list of rules to guide their dating behavior. When my husband didn't produce one, I humbly offered mine to our girls:
- Do not date.
- If you insist on dating, I prefer that you date an apostle.
- As apostles are in short supply these days, I'd accede to your dating a missionary, a monk, or Mother Teresa's brother. A pastor's son is definitely off limits. I'm a pastor's daughter with three brothers, and I know how these people think.
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