So my daughter is going on her first date, ever, and everybody involved is nervous, though some of us more than others. I’m pretty nervous as the father, especially since I have a cough I can’t get rid of. I have to shake his hand, right? Even if I’m sick? Who else is gonna do it? Do I extend my hand first, or do I wait for him to extend his?
Do I put out various foods to see what bracha he makes first? There’s no point, right? Because he’s not going to eat. Definitely not several things. Is the house clean enough? What’s clean enough? Should my wife wear a sheitel? Should I wear a hat? I definitely don’t want him to think I always wear my hat in the house. Is he taking her for food? Should she eat supper before? We’re making the same supper for everybody. So are we all eating before he comes in case he doesn’t take her for food? Should we all not have fleishig? But it’s a Monday! Should we still be eating when he comes in? Am I going to have to make conversation? What do I ask him? I want this experience to be as unmemorable as possible, I think.
Do we have to pretend to act natural, like we’re always home now, despite us rushing home and moving things around and scarfing down supper for this? Should we have his file open in front of us, like a job interview? How much do we clean? If we overclean, he’s going to walk into our house one time when we don’t bother to do that and think, “Oof. What happened?” Should I ask how traffic was? “Did you have problems finding the house?” What do I expect him to answer? “Yeah, because I don’t know my numbers!”
What kind of impression do I want to make on this guy that I might never see again but at the same time might help bury me? Wait, what do I do with my hands the whole time? Should I just mirror whatever my wife is doing with her hands, or is that weird? Could the entire conversation just continuously be interrupted by me yelling at various kids about peeking down the stairs?
Wait, what if he asks to use the bathroom? We don’t have a ground floor bathroom. He has to go upstairs. What if he bumps into my daughter up there, and they start shmoozing before the official start of the date? What if he sees her and realizes she’s already been ready for several minutes? Worse, what if he bumps into the other kids that I sent up to hide? I can send him down to the basement bathroom, but is he ready for our basement? Should I rent an outhouse?
Did I remember to make sure that the kids haven’t rearranged the magnetic letters on the fridge in the entranceway to spell out anything strange? Do you think he’ll think it’s weird that we have a fridge in our entranceway? But no ground floor bathroom? Someone I asked told me to put out rugelach on the coffee table, but they also stressed that he will not eat them. I actually have rugelach in the freezer, so that’s good news. My question is, do I even have to thaw them? Will he recognize them when I pull them out the next time? Also, we don’t have a coffee table. Should we borrow one? Will he walk in next time and say, “What happened to your coffee table?” and my daughter will ask, “What coffee table?”
Wait, does our house have a smell? So many houses I’ve been to have smells, and the people who live there have no idea. What if someone else sees the guy and thinks the couple is farther along than they really are? What if they see him visiting the outhouse? What should I ask? How about, “Where are you guys going tonight?” Or can we only ask dumb questions? Is that question too nosy? We’re asking about the current traffic conditions from his house to ours, which do not matter to us in the slightest, but we can’t help him look up traffic for where he’s going?
Wait, it’s my house. Maybe he should come up with the conversation topics. He could just look at something around him and ask about it. It’s better than me doing that. Isn’t it easier to make conversation if you’re in a place you’ve never been before? Like he could ask, “What’s with the four-foot giant stuffed Fiveish over your desk?” What if we’re just silent? Just let him look around the house and see the sights. Baby pictures, knick knacks …whatever information he wants to glean about us. He has to do that while talking about traffic?
When he knocks, do I ask, “Who is it?” Who else would it be? How many other things did I schedule for this time? Does he think I think it’s a meshulach? I should just send my daughter out with a random meshulach? (“Boy, you sure brought a lot of pushkes on this date.”) Wait, should we offer him homemade stuff at all? What if he doesn’t trust our kashrus? He doesn’t know us. But then he did research our family. But then he’s probably just now realizing that none of his research questions were about kashrus. Do we want a son-in-law who doesn’t eat in our house? That’s actually normal, right?
Can’t we talk about something that we can maybe reference before the second date, if things go well? Not like, “So how was traffic this time compared to last time?” Do I walk them out, as a good host, or do I just close the door and let my daughter do that? It feels wrong, though. Why did my daughter just look over my shoulder as I was typing all this and say, “Wow, even I’m not this nervous!”? And if you think I’m freaking out way too much about this one guy who statistically probably doesn’t even matter, I’m not. I’m freaking out about every single one going forward. If this doesn’t work, we have to do it again. Maybe we’ll do this so many times that we get good at it eventually! I hope not.
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
