Other People's Kids

Challenge

How do you extricate a Little Darling from her boyfriend's tenacious grip?

The signs tend to be good with this one. She's incredibly pretty and bright. She aims low career-wise--she wants to be a cosmotologist when she's smart enough to invent new products for cosmotologists to use--but we can work on that, and at least cosmetology is an honest living if it came to that. She's well-socialized, which is a welcome relief after having dealt with so many kids that do and say very awkward things at even more awkward times.

But that damned boyfriend.

This is not the post about him that I promised earlier. I need to know more about him before I really get down to cases and rip him a new one in this venue. What I do know is enough to convince me that she's way out of his league...but her self-image fits his actual personality perfectly. Therein lies the rub. She feels like they're matched perfectly.

Never mind that he's cheated on her, sleeping with other girls. Our intelligence-gathering capabilities have improved exponentially as the days pass, and we are in the way of knowing some very kinky details about his cheating. And the sheer quantity of girls.

This guy has eaten at our dinner table, so I got a good look at him. He's shifty and didn't say much, but what I saw utterly underwhelmed me. I don't get it. How does he get these girls salivating over him? One of them is about three years his senior. Eck. The Wife's comment: "I don't get it. What's the draw?" What indeed.

Anyway, we've really got to figure out how to make her understand that not only are there other, bigger fish in the sea, but she hasn't even reached fishing season? When the time comes she's got all the tackle she'll ever need, but for now she should be getting the garden ready for planting, or going to Easter services. She's just not quite to that season yet, and no way does she have a license.

Okay, enough with the dumb fishing metaphor. You get my drift. More on this later once I figure out some suitably nasty tactics that I want to brag about. But I guarantee: this is one show where the boy will most assuredly not get the girl...not while she's living in my house.

posted by Dan @ 6:33 PM