Cute as a Button and Sharp as a Tack

Regardless of how old you are, meeting someone’s parents for the first time is intimidating. It always has been for me, anyway. Throughout the years, some people’s parents have loved me, some have been neutral, and others hated me. There have been two unforgettable instances when someone’s parents have disliked me right off the bat without knowing me at all, and this is about one of them.

I was twenty-six, and I was dating a guy. I had met his mother (she was a lovely woman) and his grandparents (her parents), who were also wonderful people. His father was a different story. Upon finding out that I had a child, and before ever having met me, his father decided he didn’t like me. Maybe he thought I wanted his son to take care of me and my three-year-old son, which was not the case; I worked full time and my son’s father was very much in his life and paid child support. Add to that the fact that if I ever found myself in a bind, all I would have had to do was ask, and my son’s grandma would have happily helped me out. I wanted nothing from this guy, but I think his father assumed I did.

We met his dad and his dad’s new wife for dinner one evening—I believe this was the first time I met him. The dad was a bigwig in the shipyard and lived in a ritzy neighborhood. Dinner was going along smoothly until his father began talking about the new girl at work. She was around our age, and it wasn’t too far into the conversation, that I realized the old man was trying to convince my boyfriend to ask her out. With me sitting right there, he told his son, “Son, she’s cute as a button and sharp as a tack.”

I think my boyfriend said something like, “Dad!” and the wife even gave him a look. All I remember for certain is that I felt the tears well up in my eyes and I kept saying to myself, Don’t cry, don’t cry. There have been few times in my life that someone has ever made me feel so small. Getting through the rest of that dinner was tough. After we left, my boyfriend apologized profusely for his dad’s behavior, but the damage was done—I never liked that man, and I still don’t.

I didn’t understand how anyone could be so cruel. He didn’t know me at all but assumed that because I was a single mother, I was trash. In his eyes, I was not good enough for his son, but I don’t think he ever made his son feel like he was good enough, either. I remember this guy always wanting his father to be proud of him, but always falling short from gaining his father’s approval. The father was the same guy who had cheated on his wife, who as I said before, was a wonderful, lovely lady. I guess the dad believed that nobody, not even his own family, could measure up to his lofty standards.

It’s been over twenty years since that comment at dinner, but I’ll never forget it. Not only did it really hurt my feelings, it taught me something: it taught me to never judge people based on where they are in life when we meet them. I may have not made a lot of money and yes, my job was a job and not a career, but I was young and honestly, I was still trying to figure things out; eventually, I did. I went back to school, got some degrees, and a CPA to boot.

The girl who is typing this now is the same person who was a single mom, living in a trailer and struggling to pay the bills. I am the same person who sat at that table, feeling humiliated and hurt. The one thing about me that is different is that if someone were to treat me that way today, I wouldn’t sit there for the rest of the meal. I’d smile, get up, and walk out.

That guy is probably pretty old now, and I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I imagine he’s forgotten all about me, and the things he said that day at the restaurant. But I’ll never forget him because he taught me that there are people in the world who will make automatic assumptions about others, and that when they do, rather than feeling like we have to prove our worth to them, we should just keep on being who we are and doing what we do.

He also taught me one of the most valuable things I’ve learned, and that many before and after him have reinforced: Sometimes the best teachers are the ones who show us the person we don’t want to be.