Meddeling Parents

My wife and I had given up all hope of ever becoming grandparents.

That was our reasoning for taking matters into our own hands.

When my wife was on the internet the other day, looking for our daughter's latest matches on several dating sites like, loving harmony and something called mingle2mingle, we were frustrated by the matches that were posted to her profile.

Who were they kidding?

We had been paying almost two hundred and fifty dollars a month for the past seven months and we were getting nothing, and I mean nothing, in return.

Of course, our daughter, Olivia, knew nothing of this.

If she ever did, I doubted that she would still come over for Sunday dinners anymore.

"Nothing, nothing. Can you believe this crap? They want to pair our daughter up with the likes of a red headed freak that bares an awful resemblance to Carrot Top. I know Olivia is a beautiful girl, but I don't think even our good genes could compensate the likes of this one."

I groaned. I could not believe that I let her talk me into this.

"And look here, Frank, this guy here," she said as she pointed to the picture on the screen, "Armando, has been her match under three different aliases on the other sites. He looks like an convicted felon. What do you think? You're a police detective. I bet if you did enough looking, he probably has an arrest record or something, and you never know, there may be a bounty on his head or something?"

How does she come up with this shit?

I had my head resting in my hands, my elbows keeping them propped up, while I listened to my wonderful wife, of over thirty years, as she all but cyber stalked every potential match for our only child, and only chance at grandparenthood.

We must have been looking at all of these different profiles for over two hours, when I heard a voice, thankfully, someone's other than my wife's.

"Mom, Dad," Olivia called out from the bottom of the steps.

"Up here," I said as my wife tried logging out of the website and erasing the browser history before we were caught.

Olivia was a beautiful girl, I mean young woman. It was so hard for me to see her go from one failed relationship to another, and she had basically informed my wife and I that she was giving up on the whole dating thing.

That was over three years ago.

We just started taking her seriously about nine months ago.

It was never so much that Olivia ever had such a hard time meeting guys, it was keeping them. They would date for a few weeks, or months, and then nothing. The next thing you knew, my daughter was sitting on the couch with my wife and a package of chocolate, crying her eyes out and leaving us feeling helpless to do anything. Afterwords, I would get the tirade of man hating remarks, and I seriously feared for my manhood.

That happened over and over again.

So, I could understand her reasoning….to a point.

My wife, Anne, could not.

Olivia was damn lucky that I even had the balls to try and hold Anne off with her plans of basically wedding her off as a mail order bride.

See, my wife, the love of my life, sometimes marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Ah, what in the hell was I saying?

Anne was essentially a wacko. We just never said it to her face.

I would just say she had an exuberant, eccentric, sometimes controlling behavior, but in a good way.

You always had to remember to say in a good way, or else.

Olivia came running up the stairs in her usual gear of sweats and her Ipod. She must have stopped by after her daily run and decided to check in on old mom and dad.

If you asked Anne, it was to make sure we weren't dead or anything.

"Hey, what are you two doing?" she asked as she scooted out of the way of the door to let her horse of a dog, Max, a giant, brown Labrador Retriever, through to see his grandparents.

My wife was so desperate, that she spoiled that dog, called him her grandbaby and purchased so many dog accessories for him, that I had to take away her credit cards for a while.

"My only chance at being a grandparent. I have better chances of getting great-grandkids from that neutered dog, than my own daughter," she would say and place a hand over her heart.

Always had a flair for the dramatic.

"Nothing, nothing at all." My wife got up from behind the desk in the den and went around to greet first, Max, with a dog treat, and then finally, our daughter.

Thank God, that Olivia knew how quirky her mother was about things, and never questioned her strange behavior, or both of us would have been in heaps of trouble.

Olivia looked over at me for confirmation, while her mother had her in a bear hug. I shrugged.

Was shrugging necessarily lying?

The two women of my life went downstairs, and I retreated to the bedroom and tried to get some rest, as Olivia served as a distraction for Anne, for the time being.

Unfortunately for me, Olivia's visit was short, and Anne came through the door, talking up a storm.

"You know, Frank, I think that we have been going about this entirely the wrong way," she said and came over to my side of the bed, pushing my legs over to sit at the end, and basically made me uncomfortable as all hell.

"And you know, Anne, you have a side of the bed, that is all your own. No need to come over on mine and be all uncomfortable," I said while my eyes were still closed.

Could she not tell I was trying to sleep?

"I'm not uncomfortable. Oh where was I? You know, Frank, you really shouldn't distract me when I am trying to tell you something as important as this."

My eyes popped open. "Important as what?"

"Ugh, scoot over, I'm tired," she said and pushed me over to make herself more cozy.

Screw what I wanted.

"Now what was I saying? Oh yes, I was talking to Olivia and I think that the two of us probably are not in touch with what Olivia would necessarily like in a guy."

"Okay," I said.

"Well you see, Olivia was talking about going out for drinks with a couple of her girlfriends, Kaye, the really ugly one she works with, and Erica, a neighbor from her apartment complex."

"Okay and?"

"Well, what if I called the two of them, and let's say I asked them out to lunch to discuss Olivia's little problem?"

"Are you really asking me what I think, or were you just informing me of your plans?" I asked.

Who was I kidding? I already knew the answer.

"Just telling you."