 |
| Please. For the love of God, call for help. She won't let us leave. |
The night didn’t come together easily. Much like
readying a space launch, the preparation for parents to leave the house without
the smaller versions of themselves takes months, a few hundred people, “Star
Trek” technology and a minimum investment of $1 billion.
The idea for our date began with a startling
statement.
Danilo
Ilić (a fairly angry Bosinan Serb):
“I’m bored. Hey, you want to go assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria?”
Gavrilo
Princip (shrugging):
“Sure.”
No, wait. That’s how World War I started. Our
night began something like this:
“We should go on a date,” my wife said, catching
me off guard because the words were as foreign as “je ne sais quoi,” which I
totally do not have. Date? Dates are what the locals ate in old French Foreign
Legion desert movies. I hardly knew how palm fruit applied to us.
“Sure,” I said. If I’ve learned anything about my
wife it’s to agree with whatever she says, even if I don’t understand it, and
tell her she looks nice. Otherwise I lay low.
A date night? Seriously? The science behinds
date nights is simple. Parents have as much chance leaving the house alone as linear
elements have adhering to Euclidean space – amiright?
… crickets
…
… crickets
…
 |
| Children saying good-bye. Before and after. |
With that one statement (“We should go on a date”)
in minutes the plans were set into motion. We were going to a place where we
could hold hands without anyone smaller than us saying “eww” and we were going
to enjoy ourselves if we still remembered how. My wife had spoken.
Date night
checklist:
•
Escape
plan? Check.
•
Restaurant
that doesn’t serve French fries or include toys with a children’s meal? Check.
•
Babysitter
who doesn’t have a prison tattoo and is still brave enough to take care of our children?
Check.
Once the babysitter arrived we were out the
door. And, yes, we were laughing.
It’s an interesting phenomena that when adults
who’ve structured their entire communication system around explaining to their children
“why,” once these adults are removed from the children they no longer know how
to speak.
Sitting at the restaurant, smiling at each other
over breadsticks, my wife produced a page she’d ripped from a magazine
headlined, “Date Night Questions.” She’s always prepared. Good for her. If the
night’s conversation were left to me I’d probably talk about something crazy
like beer, or football. Or beer and football. Or order a beer at someplace where
we could watch football.
“What country would you most like to visit?” she
asked, leaning forward and looking at me in my eyes. My actual eyes. “And why?”
“England,” I said. “Because they speak English.
It’s even in the title of the country.”
“Fine. Great effort,” she said. “How about this
one? On a scale of one to 10, how cool are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
Her eyes glanced back to me, then to the
magazine page, then to me again.
“You know, if we have to ask how cool we are,
especially from a date night article out of a parenting magazine, chances are
we’re not cool at all,” she said.
I knew I married this woman for a reason. She’s
smart.
 |
| Oh, shit. This is how we got the kids in the first place. |
When we got home, we still remembered our
children’s names, but didn’t say them because they were asleep. Excellent.
My wife paid the babysitter, who then got on her
Harley (actually a Yamaha scooter with an “I ª Trees” sticker on the
front) and drove into the night undamaged. I’d expected to come home to
discover the kids had tied the sitter to a chair that was for some reason on
fire.
Whew.
Maybe if my wife and I do this date thing enough
we’ll eventually get good at it.
Jason's latest books, "A Funeral Story," and "How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Items," are available at amazon.com.
