Double Dating With The Parents - Version Alpha

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Epilogue

Chapter One

"Dad? You promised that when I was sixteen I could start dating. I've been sixteen two whole weeks and it's time we discussed this again."

Bob Thurlow looked over his shoulder at his daughter, Amanda, who was supposed to be doing homework at the kitchen table while he prepared their supper.

"Which class, exactly, requires you to contemplate your dating future?" he asked, dryly.

"None of them," she said. Mandy was a very practical girl, and didn't go in much for sarcasm. Actually, she had a hard time detecting sarcasm. She took everything literally.

"Do your homework now. We'll talk about modifications to our earlier contract while we eat," said Bob.

"Modifications? What kind of modifications? You said I could start dating when I was sixteen."

"I said that because I thought you'd be mature enough to handle dates when you were sixteen. I'm not so sure that's the case. It may be better to wait for the next decade to get here."

"Next decade?! You can't be serious, Daddy. The next decade doesn't start for five more years!"

"Precisely," said Bob, smugly.

"You want me to wait to date until I'm twenty?!" The outrage in her voice was genuine.

"Finish your homework and we'll negotiate during supper. I might let you out of the house with a boy when you're nineteen. Maybe."

She finally got it. He didn't tease her all that much, like Jennifer's father did. Jennifer was her best friend, and her father teased her all the time. Most of what Amanda had learned about teasing in her relatively short life had come from Jennifer's dad. But her own daddy didn't act like that very often. In fact, in Amanda's opinion, her father wasn't like "most men", at least not like the fathers her friends all described. Nor did he match the description of men she kept hearing about from other sources. She had heard the phrase, "men all just want one thing," many times, and she'd seen evidence of that in most of the boys she knew. There were also several men she was acquainted with who displayed those qualities that most girls get warned about in one way or another. Those were the men who looked at her in ways that made her get shivers down her spine, now and then.

But not her dad. He didn't date. He didn't go out to bars and pick up women. As far as she could tell, he had no sex drive at all. Other than being a teacher, all he ever did was go out to that dirty, nasty Boggy Creek place, where he worked with other volunteers to "reclaim" it. He always came back filthy and stinky, which was why she always said, "No thanks!" when he invited her to come along and become a volunteer too.

She still had questions, but she knew he wouldn't answer them until he was ready. So she got back to her algebra and finished the problems Miss Thompson had assigned. She found those problems ridiculously easy, which was probably why her mind had wandered off to think about Jack Ross. Jack was in her social studies class, which Mister Hardy taught. Mister Hardy, in fact, was one of those men she knew who did display all the traits of the "horny male" she'd heard so much about. He was forever checking out the girls in his class. He also flirted with them, though that was as far as he took it. At least as far as she knew. He also loved to talk about how different cultures looked at sex, and went on and on about that in class.

She'd found boys interesting for years. But not like Jack Ross. Jack made her stomach feel funny, when he smiled at her or said "Hi" in the halls, or in class. Just today she had found herself wishing he was in her physical science class, so they could be lab partners.

And that was what had made her think about dating. And with so little of the school year left, if she was going to be able to ask a boy out in person, it needed to be soon.

"You about ready?" asked Bob.

"Done!" she said, slamming the book closed. She gathered up all her books and stuffed them back into her back pack. She dropped it by the door, where she would pick it up on her way out the next morning.

Without being told to, she slipped easily into her role in the two person family that she belonged to. She quickly set the table as her father scooped the hamburger helper from the skillet into a bowl. The microwave beeped, and she went to it to remove the green beans she hadn't heard her father put in there. Next she snagged the bread from the counter, leaving it in the bag so it wouldn't dry out, and dropped that in its accustomed place on the table. Last, she got the butter from the fridge and set it by the bread.

They sat down at the same time, automatically reaching to hold hands as they bowed their heads and Bob said grace.

She ate a few forkfuls of each thing on her plate, and buttered a piece of bread, before she judged it was safe to probe again.

"So ... when can I go on my first date?"

"What brings this on?" he asked.

"You said I could. Now I want to."

"I'll be straight with you, Sweetheart. When boys and girls get together in private, Mother Nature has plans for them," said Bob.

"You're talking about procreation," said Amanda. While sarcasm might fly right past her, she wasn't stupid by any stretch of the imagination.

"Exactly," said Bob.

"But I don't want to procreate," said Amanda. "I just want to go on a date."

"Why?" asked Bob.

"What do you mean? Why does anybody want to go on a date? To have fun with a boy I like. Duh, Dad."

"What boy?" asked Bob. "I haven't heard you talk about any boys before this."

"There has to be a first time for everything, Daddy," she said.

"What boy?"

For the first time she felt nervous. She'd imagined going somewhere with Jack ... being alone with him. The problem was that while she'd heard all sorts of things about what boys and girls did while they were out on dates, she had absolutely no experience with that herself. She wanted to dive into the dating pool. But she had no idea whether she and Jack would "click" or not. Her dad mentioned this boy or that, every so often, usually speaking of him in a disparaging way. Some were lazy. Some were troublemakers. Some were rude, or disrespectful to teachers. There were lots of reasons why her dad was unimpressed with some of the boys in school. What if he didn't like Jack? Was Jack in any of the English classes he taught at Cole Camp High School? What if he said no, because of some personality trait he detected in the boy that he didn't like? Suddenly, she was nervous. She felt the pressure of making a decision that could have consequences she wouldn't like.

"Why does it matter?" she asked, evasively.

Bob had always tried to shoot straight with his daughter. She had only been a month old when her mother, Trudy, presumably because of post-partum depression, had taken half a dozen too many sleeping pills. The death certificate said "accidental" on it, but she had been much too intelligent to overdose that way by accident and then drink gin on top of it.

In any case, he had been left to raise his daughter and, without a mother to help, he'd had to fill both roles in the little girl's life. Because of that, he'd been very open and frank with her. He hadn't hidden anything from her about her mother, or life in general. It was his opinion that a child forewarned was a child more likely to succeed.

There was one exception to this rule. He had never had "the talk" with her. When she'd started having periods, he had told her what that meant, and what to do about it, but it had all been very scientific, going so far as to look everything up on the internet so she could see what ovaries and a womb and everything associated looked like, and where they were, and how they fit into her life as a female.

But he'd never talked to her about erotic intimacy. It was the one area of life that was "too hard" for him to take on.

That didn't mean he wasn't aware that, sooner or later, he'd have to discuss such things with her. He just kept making that later. Even now, he tried to push that discussion further down the road.

"It matters because if you like this boy, and he's the wrong kind of boy, that can turn out badly."

Her stomach clenched. What she was afraid he'd do seemed to be happening.

"What does that mean?" she asked, trying to get enough information to say Jack wasn't that kind of boy.

"It means that kids your age, when given time alone, are tempted to explore things they aren't emotionally ready for," he said.

"So you mean, like, I should group date?" she asked.

Bob blinked. This was a term that was new to him. He hated to show his ignorance, but glossing over things might turn out badly in the future.

"What is group dating?" he asked.

"Well, duh. It's when a bunch of kids all go out together."

"In pairs," said Bob.

"Well ... yeah. I guess so," said Amanda.

"So instead of two kids being tempted to explore things, there are five pairs of them all setting a bad example for each other," said Bob.

"Well, none of them are alone," her literal side pointed out.

"Have you ever heard the word orgy?" asked Bob, being sarcastic. It had been an impulse, and he immediately wished he hadn't given in to it.

"Daddy! Ewwww!" she squealed.

"Group dating is not what I meant," said Bob, secretly elated at her response. "My point is that when young people are paired up, and there is no adult supervision to guide them, they usually find it tempting to explore things that even a lot of adults control poorly. You've heard of the underage drinking parties that go on in town, right?"

"Of course," she said.

"And have you ever been invited to one?"

"Of course," she said again.

That took him by surprise. He'd been on a roll, but it was one of those rolls where a pebble starts downhill and then gets out of control.

"You have?"

"Sure, Daddy. They usually have one somewhere every Friday night."

"Shit," groaned Bob.

"Don't curse, Father," said Amanda, soberly.

"Sorry," he said.

Images were going through his mind. Amanda hadn't been allowed to date yet, but that didn't mean she was kept a prisoner in the castle. She went on sleepovers at various friends' houses frequently. And that meant she was out of his sight, and he wouldn't know if the group of girls she was with attended such parties. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he asked the inevitable question that, as a parent, he was required to ask.

"Have you ever gone to one of these parties?"

"Of course not," she said immediately. "You'd have killed me if I did."

"Thank goodness," he sighed.

"Did you think I'd do something like that without telling you?" She sounded upset. "Don't you trust me?"

There it was ... the question that, sooner or later, every teen asks of every parent. Don't you trust me?

Bob gave the same answer that most parents give.

"I trust you just fine," he said. "But sometimes peer pressure and other circumstances can cause things to happen that nobody intended to happen."

"Are we still talking about dating?" she asked.

"I don't know," he sighed. "Look, here's the deal. If you like the boy and he likes you, it's just natural for the two of you to push the envelope and explore ... um ... things."

"You mean sex," said Amanda.

He swallowed. "Uh ... yeah," he admitted.

"I already told you. I don't want to have sex with Jack. I just want to go on a date and have fun with him."

"Jack?"

"Jack Ross. He's in my social studies class."

"Jack Ross," mused Bob. "I think I know him. He's not in any of my classes. I know his mother. She's a member of the Boggy Creek Restoration Project."

"I don't know about all that," said Amanda. "We're just in social studies together and I like it when he says 'Hi' to me. I just think it would be fun to get to know him better."

"Did he ask you out on a date?"

"No. He's never actually talked to me."

"Does he have a girlfriend?"

"I don't know. Why would you ask me that?"

"Because I don't want you to get the reputation as a home wrecker," said Bob.

"A what?" Amanda sounded confused.

"Never mind. It's not cool to ask a guy on a date when he already has a girlfriend, okay?"

"You mean I can ask him?" Amanda looked elated.

"Hold on there, Pumpkin," said Bob, holding his hand up. "I don't want to rush into this."

"Don't call me Pumpkin!" she said, clearly unhappy. "That's a little girl nickname, and I'm not a little girl anymore!"

"Sorry," he said. "But that illustrates my point. You're not a little girl any more. You're a young woman, and the kind of urges that young women and young men have are difficult to control even when those kids are seventeen or eighteen."

"You're going to make me wait until I'm seventeen to go on dates?" she fairly whimpered.

"I didn't say that either," said Bob. "I just think the first few times you go out, there should be some adult supervision around, somewhere, that's all."

She sat there, mute, but gears turned in her head.

"Okay," she said, finally. "So what you mean is that you want to be there to chaperone."

Bob blinked. He'd been thinking more along the lines of a school dance, where teachers and volunteer parents wandered about, making sure nobody was making babies in dark corners. His next reaction was played out in his head in a short fantasy. He saw himself standing in his kitchen, tense, saying "Shit! Shit! Shit!" because she'd worked him into a corner he couldn't get out of without looking hypocritical. He looked at his daughter, sitting calmly across the table from him. He had been backed into a corner.

And he did not want his daughter to see him as a hypocrite.

"I would feel much better if that's how we handled things for a few dates," he hedged, carefully.

"If you were there, I wouldn't be alone with him," Amanda reminded him.

"I know, I know." He had always been truthful with her. Something told him not to change things now. "I'm just trying to think of some reason I can still say no. You're still my little girl, and I don't want you to grow up."

She didn't get angry. Instead she got up and came around the table to him. She made him scoot back and plopped down on his lap, her arms around his neck.

"I'll always be your little girl," she said, softly. "But I have to grow up. This isn't Never-never Land, Daddy."

"I know," he sighed. "I just don't know what I'll do when you meet some boy and fall in love and leave me to start your own family."

"Let's not get ahead of the game, here, Dad," she said. "All I want to do is go out with Jack Ross and see what that's like. I'm not planning on falling in love, or any of that other stuff." She kissed her father on his forehead.

"Nobody ever does," he sighed.

"I'm still not happy, though," she said. "The only times I ever heard of somebody's parents going with them on a date was to dances in junior high school. What if he thinks that means I'm a little kid? He might laugh at me."

"Well, tell him you don't take Driver's Ed until next summer and that I have to chauffer you around."

"What if he has his license?" she asked.

"Does he?"

"I don't know. Like I said, I've never even talked to him."

"If he has his license, then tell him I have a policy of not allowing my daughter to ride in a car with a teenage boy until I've gone along a few times to see how he drives. He can take that or leave it, as far as I'm concerned. Just because I allow you to start dating doesn't mean there won't be oversight."

"Hey!" said Jack, as he dropped his book bag on the floor by the hallway that led to the bedrooms, his included.

"What's up?" asked his mother, looking up from the painting she was working on. It was a water color of what she hoped Boggy Creek would someday look like, once the pollution and years of trash dumping was cleaned up. Katrina Anderson had suggested she do this painting, which would be displayed at the tiny meeting room of the building the volunteers used as a headquarters.

"You'll never believe what happened to me today," said Jack.

"Try me," she said, turning back to the painting.

"A girl asked me on a date!"

Karen put the brush down. She'd been dreading this day, and now it was here. She'd told Jack he could date when he turned sixteen. Thus far, he hadn't shown any interest in doing so, even though he'd been sixteen for four months. She'd assumed that was because he didn't have his license yet, and was unwilling to pick up a girl for a date riding bikes.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Her name is Amanda. We're in social studies together."

"And she asked you out? Does she have her license?"

"No. She said her dad will drive us around. She said he wants to check me out, but I'm not supposed to tell him she told me that."

Karen felt something relax inside her. A chaperoned date was something she could contemplate without upset.

"What kind of date would this be?" she asked.

"Amanda said we could go bowling."

"And you want to go?"

"Sure. She's cute. I've noticed her for a long time, but was always too chicken to talk to her."

"I don't know," said Karen, softly. "We've never discussed how a boy should treat a girl, and you need to know that kind of thing before you actually go on dates."

"Come on, Mom. I'm not going to be like Dad. I know he was a jerk, and I don't want to be like that."

Like Bob had been with Amanda about her mother, Karen had held nothing back from her son about his father. Dave had, when Jack was two, decided that the twos really were terrible, and that he wanted nothing to do with his son. Or his wife, as it turned out, when he met another woman at the bar he frequented to escape being around "the brat."

Karen had been devastated at her abandonment. The fact that he cleaned out the bank account when he walked out only added insult to injury. It was fortunate that her mother didn't abandon her too. Her mother had warned her that Dave was a bad choice, but she didn't say, "I told you so," when he took off. Not in so many words. Rather, she took her daughter and grandson in and helped Karen get back on her feet. In the process, the fact that Karen was better off without Dave sank in, and she accepted the pain.

Now they were on their own again. They lived in a modest two bedroom cottage. She supported them by working as a clerk at the auto parts store in town. She had, over the years, learned a good bit about auto mechanics and the parts business. People were glad when she was the clerk that helped them with whatever problem they were having.

She had navigated the morass that was divorce without both parties being present. In the end, the judge decided it was uncontested, and granted her escape from the worst mistake she'd ever made. Except that Jack had come from that mistake, and he was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Now she was faced with a problem of a different nature. For several years, she had seen the storm clouds building, off in the distance. She had seen the issue coming, marching toward her relentlessly. Her little boy was growing up.

She was torn, because he had so much potential, and she couldn't wait to see what he did with it. For that reason she was elated that he was maturing, and turning into a man. But soon she wouldn't be the only woman in his life. Soon he would leave her for another woman, and she'd be all alone again, the condition that had caused her to accept Dave as a mate in the first place.

Like many girls, Karen had simply been unable to believe that she would find true love ... that a man would want her. And she grabbed desperately for what she thought was the gold ring, but which had turned out to be a fistful of thorns.

She was older and wiser now. And she'd known this day would come, sooner or later.

"Does Amanda have a last name?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I don't know it." He shrugged. "She said her dad is in that Boggy Creek thing with you. He's an English teacher at school, but he'd not mine."

"Thurlow," said Karen. "Bob Thurlow teaches English at the high school."

"Yeah! That's his name," said Jack. "Mister Thurlow."

"And his daughter asked you on a date," said Karen. "What has the world come to?"

"What do you mean?"

"The boy is supposed to ask the girl on a date," she said.

"I don't care," he moaned. "Come on, Mom. She's really cute!"

"And that's the problem," said Karen. "Your father was really cute, and I ended up making some mistakes because of that."

He stopped arguing. She hoped maybe he'd given up.

"Do you think I'll be like that?" he asked, suddenly. "Like my father, I mean? An asshole?"

"Jack!"

"Well he was," said Jack, suddenly sounding much older than sixteen. "And I don't want to be that way. But what if I am? What if it's genetic or something?"

She put her paintbrush in the cup of water and stood, going to him and taking him into her arms. A lot of sixteen-year-old boys resist being hugged by their mother, but he didn't.

"Your father's problems had nothing to do with genetics," she said into his hair. "They had to do with the way he was raised, and the values his parents instilled in him. You haven't been raised the same way, and you're nothing like him. You never will be. And if I see you leaning that way, believe me, I'll let you know."

He leaned against her. She was surprised at the force his body was able to generate. He really was growing up.

"When is this date supposed to be?"

"I don't know. We didn't talk about that," he said.

"Tell you what," she said, rubbing his back. "I'll talk to Mr. Thurlow. I have concerns that I want to feel sure will be taken into account if you go on a date, or dates with his daughter. If I feel good about it after that ... then okay."

His sadness vanished and he jumped in the air, taking his mother's startled body with him. When they came back down he leaned back and she felt her feet leave the floor. He whirled her around.

"Thanks, Mom! I'll be good. I promise. I'll open all the doors for her and everything. Thanks so much!"

"Don't get your hopes up too much," she said, as he let her go. "Remember, Mr. Thurlow and I have to agree on everything before this will become a reality."

"No problem," said the excited boy. "I know you'll agree. I mean he's going to be there, right? Everything will be fine. You'll see. Thanks, Mom. Can I call her and tell her?"

"Do your homework first," said Karen, her heart fluttering. She hated the feeling that things were already getting out of control, and that she needed to slam on the brakes somehow. But he was so elated, so happy, that it made her heart thump in her chest. She remembered being that avid about going on a date. And she knew how devastated he'd be if she changed her mind.

"Homework! No problem!" He dashed off to his room, where he had a desk he did his homework at. Karen hadn't showered her son with luxuries, like his own TV, or expensive game consoles. He had a radio in his room, but that was it. There were no other distractions that would affect the completion of his school work.

She turned back to her easel. But she couldn't concentrate.

All she could think about were those first few heady dates, when she was so young.

The ones where she learned what it felt like to have a boy's hands and mouth on her body.

And to have something in her body.

In the forties, fifties, and part of the sixties, there really wasn't any such thing as "littering." If you had a bag full of trash left over from your takeout meal at one of those newfangled drive in restaurants, you simply rolled down the window and chucked it. If you owned a farm, you used the same draw or gully your father and his father had used, and pitched anything that couldn't be repaired, along with all household trash, into that gully. That included old cars, tires, broken chairs, anything and everything. If you lived in town, you had a 55 gallon drum in the back yard where you burned everything you could. Then you went out into the country and found someplace to dump whatever wouldn't fit into the barrel.

There were no garbage trucks. There were no landfills. Actually, there were thousands of tiny little landfills, but they weren't thought of that way. The world was our landfill, back in those days, before the population swelled and, suddenly, our roads and highways were clogged with trash. Barb wire fences looked practically solid because of the wind-borne trash piled up against them.

A few people complained. A few entrepreneurs saw a chance to start a whole new industry, and make a ton of money. They had to spend some money first, to buy some politicians, but pretty soon laws got passed and suddenly the signs that said "Fine for littering" came into existence. And that didn't mean littering was "fine" to do, though a few folks tried to argue that way at first.

Slowly, things changed, and less of man's throw aways ended up in the countryside.

But there was already a huge amount of detritus out there, and a lot of it would eventually end up in creeks and rivers as erosion and floods did their work.

Boggy Creek was one such place, where the bottom and sides were littered with old tires, refrigerators, bits of this and that. Not to mention the broken glass that made it impossible to swim in without sturdy shoes on your feet. That people wanted to swim in it was because, in the old days, before a swimming pool had been built, the whole town used Boggy Creek's swimming holes for recreation. Grandmothers and fathers talked fondly about the swing over Boggy Creek down by Second Street, where you could jump off the bridge and fly thirty feet before letting go to arc into the water fifteen feet below. Or maybe it was the mud slide they'd made just outside of town, upstream where, when it rained, you could get dressed in clothes nobody cared about and go slip and slide down a thirty foot trench that got a little deeper each time it rained. At the end of that run you splashed into a mud flat where, when you finally stood up, you were literally unrecognizable, because of the coating of mud.

But then the agro plant had been built upstream. The water began to stink. And all sorts of crap floated down into the swimming holes over the years, until you had to start being careful where you jumped in.

As the creek died, the people who had killed it turned away, ignoring what they'd done, and built a swimming pool. Every town had one, after all.

It took decades, but environmentalism finally arrived in Cole Camp, and somebody finally suggested "doing something about Boggy." It took another five years, but eventually The Boggy Creek Restoration Project had been born. There were currently thirty-five registered volunteers. They met once a month. In good weather, they met to pull junk out of the creek and employ various methods of stabilizing the banks, to prevent further erosion. When it got cold, they met in a warm room and had coffee while they planned what they'd do next summer.

In the six years the group had been in existence, they had removed over twenty tons of crap from the creek.

They'd also sicced the EPA on the owners of the agro plant, which had polluted the crap out of the site they had then abandoned after it became "economically unviable" to keep open. The plant had closed, but it had continued to contaminate Boggy Creek. The cleanup had only started the year before, but everyone could already see the difference in the ecology of the creek.

It was exciting. The people who are drawn to that kind of service in the world are passionate people. It requires a deep seated passion to wade into polluted muck and get filthy dragging old tires from that muck. When you go home smelling like death, and realize the clothes you wore that day have become trash, just like what you pulled out of the creek, it takes passion to return to the creek and do it again next month.

Bob Thurlow and Karen Ross were passionate people. Both had lost love. Both were alone, in terms of shared intimacy with another adult. For both, just about the only outlet for their passion was the restoration project. True, each was raising a child, but raising their kids employed a passion of a different nature.

They did "know" each other from the project. But the kind of things they did together didn't lend themselves to any kind of shared intimacy. In truth, all they knew about each other was their names, and that each was a committed environmentalist. At least when it came to the creek.

Now, however, they were to come together in a different kind of relationship. As their children explored shared intimacy, they would be forced to again, as well.

And all that passion inside them would change the world for both families.

Of course none of them knew that then, neither the parents nor the children. All the kids thought about, at that point, was actually going on a date, and seeing whether that matched their expectations or not. As for the parents, all they thought about was ensuring that the values they were trying to teach their children held fast against Mother Nature's persistent attempts to make the human population swell.

The parents didn't give any thought at all to the possibility that Mother Nature might have plans for them too.

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