Rules for Dating My Daughter

Someone posted this on Facebook.  It is humorous and supposedly written by a man.  (Be patient.  I'm getting to something here.)

"RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER

Rule One:
If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up....

Rule Two:
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three:
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four:
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five:
It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early."

Rule Six:
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven:
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight:
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which features chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.

Rule Nine:
Do not lie to me. On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten:
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a Black Hawk chopper coming in over a san hill near Mogadishu. When my PTSD starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is me."

My commentary:
Though this is supposed to be funny and written by someone contemporary, I grew up in the generation where it was pretty much the real thing!  When I was of dating age, there were some spoken and many unspoken rules that had as much to do with me as with the young man who was taking me out.  (Things were a whole lot different back then than they are now.)

First of all, I didn't have any serious boyfriends in high school.  The real love of my life lived 500 miles away.  He came from a really nice family, so he wasn't a threat due to distance and inbred morality.  But I did date locally.  And the rules were these:

1.  I had to ask permission to accept a date.  In those days, the age of majority was 21--not 18 as it is now.  I was not free to consider my life my own--and wouldn't have, anyway.  It was a matter of respect for my parents to think that they still had control over me.  In my generation, dates only occurred on the weekends--never during the week--unless they were special school-sponsored, chaperoned events.

2.  It was considered rude for a date to sit at the curb and honk, as if I weren't important enough to be picked up at the door.  My parents would not have allowed me to go out with someone they hadn't met.  In those days, we weren't required to register phone numbers, etc., because cell phones were a thing of the future, but the young man was expected to be a "man" and come to the door to pick me up and meet the folks. 

3.  I didn't have a curfew because I never pushed what my parents would have considered too late to be out.  Most of the time, I understood that I should be home by midnight.  I didn't keep company with crowds that drank or did drugs.  (I was quite naive and protected.  I guess those things happened, but I wasn't part of it.)  Only once in all that time was I challenged.  I came home at 1:00 AM, and Mom asked, "Don't you think you are late getting home?"  Well...yes...but it was for a cast party after one of my plays.  I guess I just thought that the folks understood this was a special occasion.  I didn't do that again.

4.  When I came home from a date, I was not to sit in the car out front with the young man.  The neighbors might talk!  This was a spoken rule.  I resented it a bit because, being a normal teenager, I didn't care what the neighbors thought.  I was a responsible kid!  Nonetheless, I obeyed.  Of course, the porch light was always on, so a perfunctory good-night kiss would be more visible to the neighborhood than if I just sat in my date's car.  Thus, I brought the young man in to the foyer where the lights were just as bright, but my parents were in the living room and not in sight.  Rest assured, my parents WERE still up! 

5.  I made it a point that my date and I never touched each other in front of my parents.  (I had never done that.  Didn't want to be teased.  "Peggy's got a boyfriend, nya, nya...")  Truth be known, my dates and I rarely touched, anyway!  Hand-holding was just about it, and never in the presence of my folks.  The exception for that was with my long-distance BF.  We held hands coming in from a walk in the woods with his sister one time.  It was a significant enough event that my mother commented that it must be a serious romance because I was holding hands with him!

6.  One time--ONE time--I stayed home from school for some invented illness.  I insisted on staying in the bed in the downstiairs parlor room of that house instead of upstairs in my bedroom, assuming that my presumed BF at the time would come to visit.  (Looking back on that, I am a bit embarrassed.  I totally thought I had my mother buffaloed, but she knew exactly what was going on.  Although I stayed in my pajamas all day, I got out of my sick bed to do my hair and make-up toward the end of the school day.  Pretty obvious, huh?)  As expected, Wes showed up to visit poor little sick me.  At some point, he was sitting on the edge of the bed--on my chest, essentially--bouncing up and down.  I was giggling.  Out of nowhere, my father showed up and said in a voice that only he could command, "Young man, I expect you to behave like a gentleman in this house!"  I guess bouncing on his daughter's chest wasn't what Dad considered gentlemanly behavior...ya think?  I was mortified, of course, but I got it.  Ol' Wes didn't last long after that.

7.  Unless I was just sheltered from that sort of thing, sex just wasn't an issue in my dating.  Girls did not dress suggestively, and boys didn't wear baggy pants that showed their underwear.  (I never considered men's underwear to be particularly sexy anyway.)  School dress codes were also life dress codes.  No problem there.

8.  I only had one date that made me cry.  He was a swimmer and a social climber.  He became interested in me only because I was active in the theater department--in the spotlight, so to speak.  We became chummy at school.  I think we only went out on two official dates, but it was close to the Senior Prom, so I was hopeful.  (Hopeful for what, I'm not sure.)  As time went on, I kept waiting for an invitation to Prom that wasn't happening.  I finally cornered his younger brother to ask...and the results weren't good.  The kid obviously wasn't happy with my backward dating ways and had no intention of inviting me to the Prom, but his father was a local Baptist minister and wouldn't hear of his son's dumping me without explanation....so....the fellow finally invited me, under duress.  I wasn't invited out to dinner first, nor to any activities after.  Just to the dance.  Bang.  Never heard from him again.  No warning.  No breakup.  I wept because I didn't understand. 

9.  Toward the end of my senior year in school, I started seeing a fellow that was a twin.  Both he and his brother were just not my type, but going out with him/them gave me opportunities to do things I couldn't otherwise have done...like going to Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago, etc.  I had zero interest in him as a boyfriend.  Apparently he felt more for me.  I didn't get it.  That summer, I went to Wisconsin to visit the real love of my life...my long-distance boyfriend.  After I was there a week, we decided that I should stay longer...but this other guy was ready for me to come home.  Somehow, he got the phone number from my mother and called me in Wisconsin.  I was furious!  How dare he!  Jim (my BF) was upset that another guy was calling me at his house...and it was pretty hard to explain!  When I finally did go home, I went home to the family farm...and this guy showed up with a HUGE stuffed animal for me, as if to claim me.  I just wasn't having any of it.  That was the end of him!

I see that I have digressed from the dating rules to other topics.  I'm old.  So sue me!  I guess the only conclusion I can come to is that I lived in a generation that wasn't ready for the changes that have happened since.  I'm still single after all these years.  I still hold to all of the principles that were part of my raising, even though the world isn't the same.  Or maybe it is?  I think parents would like to protect their children but don't know how.  If everyone held to their values, maybe the world wouldn't be in such a mess!  We'll see...