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Loco Parentis: The Love Seat
My daughter’s found it. Have I lost it?
By Sandy Hingston
Just when my 16-year-old daughter was resigned to entering a convent, romance came calling, in the form of a highly engaging Latino boy exactly her age. Besides inadvertently helping Marcy prepare for her AP Spanish test, Javier has taught her to appreciate baseball — at least while he’s playing; exposed her to exotic ethnic foods (Plantains! Sofrito! Condensed milk!); given her a new perspective on the term “extended family”; and made her happy in the way that only first love, tremblingly new and blushing, can. I know I should be grateful to him.
The thing is, though, that he’s sitting on my sofa in front of the TV, and my daughter’s head is in his lap. With one hand, he is tracing little circles on her bared upper arm. With the other, he’s twirling a strand of her hair. And he’s bending down to murmur in her ear.
They’re watching one of Marcy’s pet reality shows. I can’t believe he wouldn’t rather watch the Phillies game, but apparently what’s on the screen doesn’t much matter to him. Imagine that. Pre-Javier, I would have been sitting in the rocking chair beside the sofa, making caustic comments to Marcy about the morons on her show. Now, I can’t figure out where to sit. I don’t want to intrude. On the other hand, I’ve been at work all day and haven’t seen my children, and would like to be sociable. Even more, I’d like to see the Phillies game. But as Marcy is all too willing to remind me, because her father and I are cheap troglodytes, we only have one TV in the house, and she and Javier aren’t allowed up in her room, so where exactly is it that I’d like them to go besides the sofa? Defeated, I retreat to the kitchen, reading the paper there until my husband Doug, who hasn’t got my rarefied sensibilities, finishes practicing the trombone, strolls into the living room, settles into the rocking chair, takes the remote control, and flips to the Phillies, deaf to Marcy’s protests. (Javier is noticeably silent.)
The two young lovers trudge into the kitchen to sit at the table. I scoot back to the living room to see the game.
“It’s my house,” says Doug, apparently not as insensitive as I’d thought. “I have a right to watch the Phillies.”
I pat his knee. “Of course you do.”
But reclaiming the living room isn’t just about the Phillies. It’s also about that sofa-lounging. “It makes me uncomfortable,” Doug confesses, his voice low.
“I know. Me too. He does have his feet on the floor, though.” A prior, brief relationship of Marcy’s that similarly centered on the sofa resulted in the imposition of what she scathingly describes to friends as “the two-foot rule”: If she’s on the couch with a date, at least two of their four feet have to be on the carpet. This seemed like a good compromise at the time Doug and I imposed it, and Marcy’s 12-year-old brother Jake, sitting Buddha-like at the computer in the living room corner through all this, placidly observing, points out that the two-foot rule does allow for any combination of feet.
The thing is, though, that he’s sitting on my sofa in front of the TV, and my daughter’s head is in his lap. With one hand, he is tracing little circles on her bared upper arm. With the other, he’s twirling a strand of her hair. And he’s bending down to murmur in her ear.
They’re watching one of Marcy’s pet reality shows. I can’t believe he wouldn’t rather watch the Phillies game, but apparently what’s on the screen doesn’t much matter to him. Imagine that. Pre-Javier, I would have been sitting in the rocking chair beside the sofa, making caustic comments to Marcy about the morons on her show. Now, I can’t figure out where to sit. I don’t want to intrude. On the other hand, I’ve been at work all day and haven’t seen my children, and would like to be sociable. Even more, I’d like to see the Phillies game. But as Marcy is all too willing to remind me, because her father and I are cheap troglodytes, we only have one TV in the house, and she and Javier aren’t allowed up in her room, so where exactly is it that I’d like them to go besides the sofa? Defeated, I retreat to the kitchen, reading the paper there until my husband Doug, who hasn’t got my rarefied sensibilities, finishes practicing the trombone, strolls into the living room, settles into the rocking chair, takes the remote control, and flips to the Phillies, deaf to Marcy’s protests. (Javier is noticeably silent.)
The two young lovers trudge into the kitchen to sit at the table. I scoot back to the living room to see the game.
“It’s my house,” says Doug, apparently not as insensitive as I’d thought. “I have a right to watch the Phillies.”
I pat his knee. “Of course you do.”
But reclaiming the living room isn’t just about the Phillies. It’s also about that sofa-lounging. “It makes me uncomfortable,” Doug confesses, his voice low.
“I know. Me too. He does have his feet on the floor, though.” A prior, brief relationship of Marcy’s that similarly centered on the sofa resulted in the imposition of what she scathingly describes to friends as “the two-foot rule”: If she’s on the couch with a date, at least two of their four feet have to be on the carpet. This seemed like a good compromise at the time Doug and I imposed it, and Marcy’s 12-year-old brother Jake, sitting Buddha-like at the computer in the living room corner through all this, placidly observing, points out that the two-foot rule does allow for any combination of feet.
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