True Love Ate My Homework

Well it happened. The girl-child finally got a boyfriend. This is big news and a mountain-sized moment since she’s been coveting the status of “boyfriend” since birth.

I knew that a high school filled with drama queens and ultra geeks would be the place for her to find her soul mate and that’s why I sent her there. Other kids saw this high school, which might as well be called “Super Hero High” as an academic mecca, a math-and-science Matterhorn, and face each day with the necessary resolve to fight their way through the high-concept classes (literary research?) to the goal of good grades.

But not the girl. When we were leaving orientation, starry-eyed and blown away by the sheer Hogwartian quality of the place, my daughter was floating on air for an entirely different reason. We saw a level of academia you rarely see in goof colleges, much less in a high school. But Sarah crunched her packet to her chest and sighed “Did you see all the cute boys in there? Oh my GOD!”

There were a couple of false starts, a Ziggy-Marleyan young man who was far too forgiving of my daughters various insanities, telescoping his base hopes a little too clearly; and some French kid—I think—who apparently didn’t like her misuse of post-participle noun-events but thought she had pretty eyes. She waved them both off, saw right through them, left them floundering in the wasteland of IM “ignore” commands and a flurry of whatevers. The new kid had a quality they didn’t have in that he’s very honest and very natural and when she was acting like a hyper-active stage-hungry little nutcase he called her on it and I think that mattered to her.

Then he kissed her.

So they’re a couple. And by couple, I mean they disgust me. Last night the girl child gasped and flopped herself down on the end of the couch with such ridiculous force I thought she’d popped a rib—I paused the TV and asked her what happened. She sighed and said “[undisclosed] sat here.” I suppressed the sudden urge to vomit and was about to tell her she was being hyper dramatic but the Artist, who was leaning against the wall sipping tea, snorted and said “Yeah, maybe some of his butt particles are still there,” which you would think would snap the girl-child out of her love induced reverie but, no, she merely sighed again and said “butt particles” and the rest of us rolled our eyes so hard the earth shifted in its orbit.

I had to drop her off at Hogwarts yesterday since my Attorney was in D.C. taking a dep (I love it, I feel like I’m on some cool lawyer show). On the way we listened to the new eagles song and dug it and then Beverly Hills came on so we were rocking it in traffic and she remembered she’d forgotten some homework and begged me to let her miss first period. I pulled over and let her out and told her to tell them her homework was a casualty of love.

I’ve dreaded this day as long as she’s been aching for it, but I have to say it was anti-climactic. It didn’t even bother me when I caught them entangled on the couch. I just told them to disentangle themselves and that was that. When she floated home the first day in love, I hugged her and said “good for you.” I didn’t admonish her for snogging in the hallways. I didn’t tell her to watch his hands. It never occurred to me. I was just happy for her.

Of course I put a tracking device in the kid’s backpack while he wasn’t looking, but that’s just typical dad stuff. Right?