Of Miles Rausch

Bath and Body Quirks

I sup­pose one of the stress­ful rights-of-passage for a new cou­ple is the meet­ing of the fam­i­lies. I can’t recall a sin­gle girl­friend I’ve had where the thought of meet­ing her fam­ily didn’t make break out in a cold sweat. You know the kind. That type of cold sweat I’ve come to asso­ciate with influenza and hear­ing Chuck Nor­ris’s foot­steps.

For the record, when I write about myself pos­sess­ing some­thing, I write “Miles’s thing”, not “Miles’ thing”. Just like I would say, “Holli’s Com­edy Bytes shirt”.

So, it was this very cold sweat that I encoun­tered when Holli called me on Sat­ur­day after­noon. We were going to eat with her par­ents in Sioux Falls at 5:00. That gave me plenty of time. But first, we had to visit Min­erva Driscoll. Min­erva is an inter­est­ing woman. She is the sec­re­tary for East Hall, and to look at her, she appears sweet-tempered, kindly, even quiet, per­haps. As it turns out, she’s a smok­ing, swear­ing, gruff, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman. I like Min­erva; she’s a character.

Holli and I were meet­ing with her to hash out the sec­ond attempt at a fundraiser with her. We man­aged to raise over $60 this fall, and we were decid­ing what worked and what we should scrap. She has a sort of Bath and Body Works busi­ness going. We approached her on behalf of her can­dles, but it soon became appar­ent that lotions, sprays, and washes were the way to go. That is why the new MD Designs Fundraiser has no real can­dles in it. Bold, I know. We man­aged to come to a rea­son­able set of con­clu­sions. Once done we walked back to my apart­ment, got a quick psuedo-lunch, and watched some Beatles.

I was ner­vous, as I said above. I’ve met her par­ents and sis­ter, but I haven’t inter­acted with them, per se. I mean, sure I have friends, and my fam­ily seems to like me, but I think that’s mostly because I have such a cool web­site. And, yeah, her par­ents have seen the web­site, and they prob­a­bly love it, but who doesn’t? Her mom even once said that the only way she gets to Holli’s page is through mine. That’s under­stand­able, but it’s unfair to hold me up to the Awayken/MilesRausch.com stan­dard. That, and I didn’t have my tablet around with a browser open to the page.

I was down to my wits. No, not like that. Get your mind out of the gut­ter, guys.

Any­way, we drove down to Sioux Falls. The plan was to meet them at Perkins. You know, the green place. We got there, and her fam­ily wasn’t. So that meant wait­ing. Wait­ing as if a blade to fall upon my neck. Okay, now I’m being dra­matic. Then they showed up. They parked right next to Holli, actu­ally. First was her lit­tle sis­ter, Marissa. Then were the par­ents, Larry and Carol. The greet­ing is always a toss-up. I mean, my par­ents have taken to hug­ging Holli right away, but Holli is a girl, and my par­ents love to touch peo­ple. Should I expect the same from Holli’s par­ents? How should I react? What if the hug is too long? But I had no time to think on these. Her dad came at me, hand extended, smil­ing, say­ing, “Miles, nice to see you again.” We shook hands. The hate was pal­pa­ble. Her mom, like­wise, extended her hand in greet­ing. Okay. The decided the hug thing. First social obsta­cle suc­cess­fully tackled.

Then we were seated non-smoking. Actu­ally, non-smoking pretty near the door, so it shanted a long walk. (I’m mak­ing up words now). The awful thing about eat­ing with peo­ple, at least peo­ple who are pay­ing for you, is deter­min­ing what is an accep­ti­ble cost for your food. I was sit­ting by Holli, so I tried to use her meal as a guide, but she got the french toast which was way below any of the sup­per items I was look­ing at. Then Vance, our waitor, returned. He reminded me a bit of Toby, from The Office, plus some work­ing out. I pan­icked and ordered a cheese burger, after­which it occured to me that I had had a cheese burger the night before. Two of them, actually.

From then on I just tried to not sound retar– stu­pid. I tried to toss in a joke or two where appro­pri­ate. For instance, Holli men­tioned that she has lifts in every shoe but her shower shoes. And Marissa said, “You wear shoes to the shower?” And Carol said, “Oh, yeah. You want to in col­lege.” And I said, “Oth­er­wise you get STDs.” Thank­fully every­one got it and laughed. I was wor­ried that it wouldn’t go over so well, but it took off like a free chicken. Carol men­tioned that they weren’t ignor­ing me by not talk­ing to me, but they had a lot to catch Holli up on. It was fine by me, as the less I said, the fewer occas­sions for misspeaking.

I don’t know if you know this, but Holli has a hiccup-thing that hap­pens. It kinda sounds like she’s say­ing, “HI!”, but she’s not. It turns out that Marissa has this, too. It’s, like, a fam­ily thing, I guess. My fam­ily thing is no ice. So, I was scoop­ing what ended up being an entire 12 oz glass’s worth of ice when Carol asked Holli, “What is your boyfriend doing?” Well, I almost made it the entire time with­out being odd. I explained my sen­si­tive teeth, and Carol explained that she used Sen­so­dyne, and it really helped. Then, for no rea­son, her sen­si­tive teeth left, and she didn’t need Sen­so­dyne any­more. I am still unclear, how­ever, as to whether Sen­so­dyne was a treat­ment or cure.

Then, both Marissa and Holli needed new shoes. Shoes, right? What­ever. Girls love shoes. Then we headed back. I called David to see where he actu­ally was this week­end, and it turned out that he was in Mar­shall (that’s right! I for­got) with Bryce and oth­ers. It also turned out that we would not be hav­ing an Arrested Sun­day. It was okay. I already spend my nights cry­ing; what’s one more tear?

Speak­ing of tears, have you ever noticed that Joan Cusack usu­ally looks like she’s about to cry? Holli thought that was due to her hav­ing puffy eyes, but I think it’s because she’s ugly and sees her­self in a mir­ror reg­u­larly (and thus wants to cry). So, we came up with a code phrase to say when we think some­one is Joan Cusack ugly. I know, it’s not nice, but it’s hilar­i­ous. I won’t tell you guys the phrase because there might be some uggos (as we call them) read­ing the site right this minute.

Yes. I mean you.