The Awkward Last Encounter (Hannah Ulrich)

I get kind of obsessed about guys. Just like any other love-crazed girl, I engage in the typical stalking sessions (not just the facebook ones, though). On occasion, I get to drive the love of my life home from school, and I knew we were meant to be when he started giving me The Look before he got out of the car. Things were going great; we hung out in school, I introduced him to my best friend’s boyfriend -- they kicked it off right away -- and before I knew it I was tucked under his arm in his basement with the aforementioned couple. The only thing we ever really disagreed on was the sanity of my family -- I insisted that my family was crazy. My parents were rigid clothes police, hell-bent on securing my virginity for the rest of my existence; my brother, a gamer, pothead, and dropping out of community college; and my sister, the vain fashionista who thought I was about to start campaigning for off-shore drilling at the slightest show of conservatism. He, on the other hand, kept telling me my family was perfectly normal, but I knew if he ever got a glimpse of my family when they weren’t on their best behavior, I was done for.

            I knew I was just biding my time; this state of euphoria could only last so long before I resumed my normal state of loneliness. Don’t get me wrong; I have tons of friends and I go out almost every weekend. But my flames burn hot for a short time and die out quickly, and the ones I want to keep I end up pushing away. Anyway, I was biding my time. Some family came into town, and in a brief period of insanity, I told my ten-year-old niece about my boy. She was ecstatic and demanded we do a driveby of his house. In this moment of weakness I obliged and we took off; thankfully, it was an uneventful trip and we were shortly back home.

A few days went by before I invited my boy over real quick so we could go watch a movie with some friends. The house was in an uproar; step-brother (one of the few sane ones), step-sister, step-brother-in-law, niece, nephew, brother, sister, puppy, and parents all cramped into a three-bedroom townhouse. Six out of the ten were sitting at the table, myself included, playing cards; the competitiveness was palpable. My brother-in-law and his two kids were roughhousing in the living room, and the cries from my wounded niece pierced everyone’s ears. My brother was secluded into his little mole-hole as I call it, playing Starcraft in his bed in a dark room. I’m still surprised that I could hear that fateful knock on the front door that signaled his arrival. In a flurry, I desperately begged my family to just act normal, a foreign concept to the majority. This was not surprisingly unheard by all; my niece was still crying over some misfortune or other that befell her while trying to wrestle her rather large father (who is a child at heart, and not the cute kind). Resigned, I trudged to the front door, opened it, and let him in.

The beginning of the end. You know how they say not to introduce any prospects to your family until six months after you start dating? Yeah. My parents don’t let me go out with a boy until they feel they know him inside and out. So dragging him into that disastrous family reunion was a kamikaze mission. The image was burned into my memory, and unlike my flames that burn hot and fast, this one had a searing quality to it that promised to always rest in my memory  as my last encounter with him. He slowly strolled into the living room, with crying adolescents and tense adults throwing smack talk at each other, hardly noticing the love of my life, and I saw a look in his eyes that told me he would never step foot in this zoo (my life) again.

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