Trying to understand why parents hate me

One nice thing about being married to a woman close to my own age: no living in-laws. Now, that may seem harsh, but I don’t mean it that way. I met Mrs. Taylor’s (formerly Lori Frankforter’s) father only once, shortly before he passed away. He seemed like a fascinating man; someone I would have enjoyed knowing.

Likewise, Mrs. T’s (fLF’s) mother – from all I’ve heard – was a nice enough woman. I would have liked them both.

But if past experience is any indication, they would not have liked me.

Ever since Diana, my first “real” girlfriend at age 16, girls’ parents have hated my stinking guts. I’m not sure why.

I’ve been told by people who should know that I have something of a blind spot when it comes to my own personal (and, apparently, abundant) flaws. Whether these decades of parental disdain are the direct result of one of these flaws is anybody’s guess, but it has always been a problem.

Not a problem for me, so much, but for the parents. One thing I have learned over the years; if a girl’s parents dislike you, odds are their daughter will wind up liking you even more. A psychiatrist could probably explain this dynamic, but I can’t.

Diana, for instance. I’m certain both her mother and father spent most of their free time trying to figure out ways to kill me and make it look like an accident.

He was a preacher, she a preacher’s wife. In their minds my death would have been nothing but divine intervention, God’s way of ridding the world of a menace on a par with Judas Iscariot or the antichrist.

The Good Reverend was convinced I had “designs” on his daughter. That’s exactly how he put it to me early on in our relationship: designs. I assured him this was not the case, but of course I was lying through my teeth and we both knew it.

I mean, I was 16, man! “Designs” weighed so heavily on my mind that I could barely figure out how to put my socks on in the morning. It wasn’t my fault. A billion years of evolution had made me that way! (By the way, evolution is an excuse you do not want to fall back on when defending your zealous libido to a girlfriend’s fundamentalist minister father. Found that one out the hard way.)

Point is, Diana’s parents hated me. I’m sure they were thrilled when she finally dumped me for a guy who owned his own car.

The parents of my next serious girlfriend, Corky, were atheists; cool, ultra-liberal hippy-types. They smoked pot. They read Rolling Stone and spent hours out on their back deck practicing tunes on their alto recorders and lutes. Corky’s dad’s hair was longer than mine, for cryin’ out loud!

They should have loved me, but didn’t. I’m guessing it was for the same reason Diana’s folks didn’t love me.

To be fair, I understood this attitude better years later, shortly after my own daughter hit her teens. As a parent, I spent many a late night waiting on the front porch, wishing I owned a shotgun.

But that all changed once Aubreii married. I liked her husband a lot and my days of boyfriend-hating and shotgun-wishing were over.

Not so with my first set of in-laws. They hated me even after I walked their daughter down the aisle. They did their best to hide it, but I could tell.

There have been a few wives and many girlfriends since then (which, I suppose, helps explain why parents hate me). I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had a tough time with commitment. I mean, most guys develop at least a little emotional maturity before they’re old enough to qualify for AARP membership.

What can I say. I’m a late bloomer. Or, possibly, just kind of stupid. Either way, I seem to be getting the hang of this whole relationship thing. Finally, and at long last.

Mrs. T (fLF) seems pretty happy with my performance so far, at any rate.

So who knows? Maybe it would be a good thing after all if my in-laws were still with us. Maybe I’ve finally become someone a parent could like.

Maybe.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

I’m not ready for my close-up and probably won’t be any time soon

Like a lot of folks, I’m an egomaniac with deep-seated security issues. Some days, I think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread; not just any sliced bread, but that good stuff from Arnie’s Bakery that goes for over three bucks a loaf. Other days, I feel like something that should probably be scraped from the sole of a dairy farmer’s boot.

Since going into semi-forced retirement, my appearance reflects this fact. I’ve found that when you’re not going into an office regularly, have no meetings, and your wife is away at work all day, well, personal grooming becomes optional, rather than mandatory.

Where once I shaved daily, it’s now a twice a week affair, maybe three times if I’m expecting a visit from the Pope or Queen Elizabeth. At least one day each week, I don’t bother to shower; I just roll out of bed, dress and slap on an old fishing cap that Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter) hates a lot.

But then, a couple times a week I pull the full Monty; I shower, shave, dye some of the grey out of my beard, brush with the electric toothbrush that does a good job but takes forever, floss, trim the errant hairs attempting to escape my ears, put “product” in my hair and dress in clothes that have had the wrinkles taken out of them with an honest-to-gawd iron.

I do this so Mrs. T (fLF) will have something to remember me by other than the fishing cap. Just in case she meets an amorous tennis pro who’s into ladies of a “certain age.”

It’s not an ideal situation, but one that seems to work for me.

With one exception.

That’s when I go out in public. To the grocery, the mall, the movies.

I’m not famous, but my ugly mug is in the newspaper every week and has been for years. Regular readers of this column (Hi Norm and Flo!) recognize me when I’m out and about. Often, they want to tell me why they liked a particular column, one I may have written years ago and have now completely forgotten. Other times, they want to check the accuracy of something I wrote. I always lie and assure them everything here is 100 percent true.

I don’t mind being approached in the frozen foods aisle or in the ticket line at the theater. In fact, I like it a lot. In what other job do strangers stop you on the street to tell you how much they enjoy your work? I used to be an elementary school janitor and lemme tell ya, nobody ever came up to me in the lunch room to let me know what a wonderful  job I’d done cleaning the toilets.

So, yeah, it’s great.

The only downside? It always seems to happen on a fishing cap day, when I look like Quasimodo’s stunt double and smell like the floor of a chicken coop. When I’m wearing sweats and sneakers with holes in the toes. When my ear hair is long enough to hang Christmas ornaments from.

It never fails. Days when I leave the house smelling of Old Spice, my hair neat and combed, my teeth fully brushed – basically, an exact duplicate of Kevin Costner in his prime – well, on those days … nothin’. I could hang a sign around my neck saying, “Please ask me about my ‘Reality Check’ column,” and I’d get nothing but blank stares.

But put me in torn Bermuda shorts and a pair of dollar store flip-flops? All of a sudden I’m Justin Bieber in a room full of 13-year-old girls. Everyone knows me.

There are those who would say this is Karma’s way of lessening my innate egomaniacal tendencies and increasing my deep-seated security issues. But I’ve never trusted Karma. It never seems to strike down the folks who need it most, while the good guys keep dropping like flies.

Anyway, this is all just my way of letting the nice lady (and regular reader) I recently met at the hardware store know; I don’t always look like that.

And please, please don’t post that selfie you took of us by the power washers on Facebook.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 745-9530

The mega-mall is no place for a cave man

Went to the mall the other day. Not just any mall; a super-mall in Detroit.

I was visiting my daughter, her Significant Other, and their five kids. Five kids is a lot, particularly when they run the gamut from sulky teenager to violently yodeling toddler. I love them all more than life itself, but not so much that I can stand to be cooped up in a house with the lot of them for more than a few hours at a time.

Which is why I was at the mall. I had already grabbed breakfast at my favorite Greek joint (Zorba’s), written my column for that week at my favorite post-hippie-nouveau-chic coffee house (Java Hut), and window shopped at a place called Junkyard Guitars (aptly named).

For me, these days, that’s a full day. But it wasn’t even 3:30. I had no intention of returning to my daughter’s home until it was a bit closer to the younger contingent’s respective bedtimes.

My daughter, who understands all too clearly the desire to occasionally escape the company of juveniles, suggested I try the mall.

Though I lived in Detroit for years, it was a mall I’d never visited before. This is not surprising; I avoid shopping whenever possible. Malls haven’t held much attraction for me since the early ‘80s, when I used to try to meet girls there.

But it was either the mall or entertaining 2-year-old Ari (his name, I believe, means “offspring of the Tasmanian Devil”) while my daughter nursed the baby. I chose the mall. It wasn’t a tough call.

Aubreii described it as “kind of upscale.” I don’t know when she inherited her millions, but “kind of upscale” doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. This place had a few stores I’d heard of, but have never been to. Nordstrom. Sak’s Fifth Avenue. Leon’s Big Money Pit.

OK, I made that last one up, but you get the idea. The kind of mega-shops that feature distressed T-shirts “on sale” for $400. There was a jewelry store there, a few of them, in fact.

Working up my courage, I casually strolled into one, thinking I might pick up a cute little necklace or something for Mrs. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter). I was looking to drop as much as fifty bucks.

I knew I was in trouble when not one, but three sales clerks – wearing suits that cost more than my car – descended on me. One offered me a glass of Riesling. She assured me it was a good year. I told her it would be a pleasure to drink wine that didn’t come out of a box for a change.

After that, two of the clerks suddenly remembered they had other business to attend to. The one still stuck with me did not seem thrilled with the prospect, but was determined to make the best of it.

A professional.

“What can I show you?” is what she said. What she meant was, “Something from our ‘found in the parking lot’ collection, perhaps?”

I told her I needed some earrings for my wife. How expensive can a pair of earrings be, right? So I thought.

The clerk showed me a few different “moderately priced” sets. Apparently “moderately” has a different meaning in this mall than in the real world. Oh, I could have bought them. But it would have meant first donning a ski mask and knocking over a few rural banks.

I’m not sure my Catholic upbringing would allow that. So I left without the earrings, and without my wine. For some reason, it never quite made it out to me.

Riding the skywalk conveyor (when you shop here, you don’t have to walk, baby!) from the north side of the mall to the south, I took my first close look at the other shoppers. Everyone, every single one of them, man, woman and child, was prettier than me. And better dressed.

I felt like a Neanderthal shambling into an encampment of homo sapiens. I figured it was only a matter of time before security rolled up on a Segway and helped me decide to vacate the premises, so instead I did it on my own.

On the ride back to Aubreii’s I stopped at a Trader Joe’s and bought a couple bottles of Three Buck Chuck. I’m not sure if it was a good year, unless last week was a good year, but for three bucks, it’s OK wine.

Went well enough with the barbecue my daughter put together that evening. Served on paper plates left over from somebody’s birthday party.

It was interesting to peek into the glitterati lives of the “other half,” but all-in-all, I’m pretty happy right where I am. Besides, being so pretty all-day-every-day would take more effort than I’m willing to exert.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414