The Rules

I suppose it is no wonder that my family was a bit bewildered by my behavior. In my life BIBD (Before Impossibly Brilliant David), I had functioned at home and on dates and in public and in private within a completely consistent and consciously articulated system of my own devising. I had Rules for this stuff. Some people knew some of my Rules, but all anyone would ever have to do was watch me, and the list would become apparent.

• Always say yes to a first date. It takes a lot of courage to ask a girl out. That kind of courage deserves a little compassion.

• Guys worth anything are guys that appreciate straight talk. Don't dissimulate, prevaricate or avoid. Just talk. (This Rule got me into trouble during my student days in the Bible Belt, but it was appreciated out here on the west coast where plain-talking, jeans-wearing, peer relationships between the sexes existed. I suppose it's the influence of our pioneer past or our predominantly Scandinavian forebears or something. Whatever cultural thing is happening, the guys I admired were guys who appreciated a girl who could just talk. And listen.)

• Never do anything with a guy that would cause embarrassment or some fast explaining if my brothers walked in on it.

• Don't date anyone (more than once) my brothers or my dad don't like. Women know about women and men know about men. I could trust the men in my family, and I did.
  

• Don't kiss anyone I'm not planning on marrying. (This one from an informal discussion that happened out at camp one year. A guy I had a lot of respect for told us that he'd decided to draw the line there, simply because it made everything so much simpler. People told me I would never find a guy who even cared about this, but I decided to keep it anyway.)

• Generally, despite the deep and persistent ache to be loved, I didn't want to be the "girlfriend." Girlfriends become ex-girlfriends. I didn't want to be anyone's ex anything. It seemed icky to me.

Those were my Rules. They worked for me. They meant that I'd been on dates with lots of different sorts of guys, and that I had a lot of guy friends (who made a lot more sense to me than girls ever did or ever have done), and that I'd held hands on dates sometimes and been teased a lot about my Rules and goofed up once or twice (but goofing up on any of those Rules can't result in a disease or a pregnancy or being anyone's "ex" - so it's not like I'd made any disasters). In general, my family did not know me as a daughter or sister who had a boyfriend. In general, my family knew me as the daughter and sister who did creative little projects sometimes or played the piano or had her nose in a book. And, in general, guys I dated didn't spend much time with my family. I only needed to know what the family feedback was and then they'd done their part in my dating life.

My dad was a big reason for my Rules. Back in my high school days, the renowned Basic Youth Conflicts conference came to Portland, and I attended. I was fifteen, and I was not allowed to date until I turned sixteen, and so I was getting ready. I listened to everything, and I took notes in my enormous three-ring binder. I gathered up the Rules being preached to Christian Youth across the country by one of the first traveling mega-speakers of our mega-meeting era, Bill Gothard. He's still around. (You can look him up if you want to, but I'm not recommending him. Just so you know. He was a good precursor to the "dating" I did while in college in the sultry heat of the Baptist Bible Belt, with chaperones surrounding, surveying, stultifying and strangling all the fun and all the health out of the thing.)

I was eager to date. I came home from those huge "Basic Youth" gatherings in the Coliseum, ready to discuss these ideas with my parents.

"Dad, we learned something last night that you will have to help me do." I was using my most let's-get-down-to-it voice. I was certain of his cooperation. After all, he was the one who had paid my tuition to these famous conferences.

He looked up from his newspaper. I started in.

"Whenever I get asked on a date, I'm going to bring the guy to you so he can get your permission first."

His eyebrows came together in the clear expression of patient irritation. Weird. He wasn't happy about this. Maybe he didn't understand. This would be him, cooperating in my dating life. He would be a player in it. Actually, he would be in charge of it. I didn't seem to be explaining this very well.

"If I don't really like the guy, or if I don't want to go out with him, then you can tell him no for me," I explained.

He paused for a moment and took a long breath, and then he said one of the most important sentences he ever said to me. "If you can't tell a guy no, then you're not old enough to date."

The conversation ended there. I could see, even at the tender age of fifteen, that he was absolutely right. Mine was the era of NOW and women's lib and power suits. The ridiculous and demeaning one-down position certain kinds of women seem to want, I didn't want. The guys I knew were my peers and friends. How could I change into a silly and simpering girl who hid behind her daddy? He was right. My dad was right. My relationships were my responsibility, and my dad's brief refusal to become the Master of My Dating Life was the the ground on which I stood when I began to assemble my Rules. (He might have been happier for the rest of my fifteenth year if he had agreed to take over. I spent the rest of the time arguing that waiting until my sixteenth birthday was stupid.)

My Rules. My dating life. My decisions. Feedback from the men in the house, and chatter with my mother and sister, and other than that, all my dates were away from home. I was standing on my own two feet with my romantic life. And that is why my family can be excused for being a little shocked and even stunned when it came to the way I acted when David's Brain (and David's height and hair and hands) entered my world. My dates had never spent much time in the house before.

One did, once. He came in ... we spent time there, sitting in the living room and talking ... listening to music ... me, breathlessly playing some bit of "classical" music for him - once it was (I blush to admit) the ubiquitous Canon in D (did you know you can sing Jolly Old Saint Nicholas to it? And Twinkle Twinkle?) ... him accusing me of having exactly the same emotional reaction as I decried his having for John Lennon (he was right). My dad asked me once if that guy ever relaxed. Apparently, when I was upstairs getting my shoes so I could go out with him, and he was alone with my parents, not so much. That he wasn't all that comfortable with my family was not a point in his favor.

But that guy, and all the others, none of them were Brainy David. Intellectual David, I noticed. And then I did a lot more than notice. I began to fall in love, for real, and for certain, and with no looking back. It was the retreat at the beach house that did it. During those three days with friends and family, my behavior (mine and his ... mine with him) unleashed what seemed like a coordinated and community effort at reining me in. I had obviously lost my mind.

One by one, they pulled me aside. One by one, they tried to snap me out of it. I wasn't following the Rules anymore. (My Rules! Those were my Rules! Wouldn't I be the one to know when to break them? Wouldn't I be the one to declare them obsolete?) No one knew what to make of it. One by one, they began to make their case. (Is there anything quite as pointed as the well-intentioned interventions of people doing a thing for your own good?)