Learning To Love Annie

Being insane, I may be the only parent in the world who does this, but I doubt it.  Since my children have been little, say,  preschool age, I have watched them with their opposite-sex classmates, and play matchmaking games in my head.  I look at little Bobby, and try to picture him as Trillian’s husband one day.  Or little Susie, imagining a sweet courtship with Zaphod.

I have my favorites, always have.  There is one girl at church, we’ll call her Alexis, who is the most well-behaved, intelligent little girl I’ve ever seen.  And, when I’m in one of my insane moods, I’ll picture the grown-up version of Alexis joining our family.  It gives me the warm fuzzies.

But I know love, and I know young men and women.  My compulsive, must-be-organized, order-needing son will one day find the love of his life in a free spirit.  It’s just how things are. 

My matrimonial dreams for my progeny are shattered, because in order to play this mind game with myself, I have to think of the kids at hand.  And there’s only one female free spirit I can think of within my kids’ circle of friends.

And, I don’t like her very much.

Even though she annoys me greatly, Zaphod hates her with the kind of passion that’s usually reserved for the Yankees.  Let me explain how much Zaphod and Annie hate one another.  Annie is Trillian’s best friend from school, and whenever she calls the house, she’ll ask to speak to Zaphod, just so she can yell “I hate you!” and hang up the phone.  My son is always plotting a scheme to “get” her on the playground or in the hallway.  One of his passwords is “IHateAnnie” .  He spares no opportunity to tell me how horrible she is, and how much he hates her.

And most discerning adults know this is 10 year old flirting.

So, I have this picture in my head that one day, when the hormones are right, Zaphod will fall for her.  This scares me to death.  I’d much rather him go for the well-behaved church girl Alexis, who would help him keep a Martha Stewart, picture-perfect home.  But I know that when the time comes, he will fall for a girl more like Annie. 

And she is quite a handful, without any hormones interjected into the situation.  I’ve been playing this mental exercise in my head, just so I’ll be ready when Zaphod brings home – if not Annie – some other tattoed and pierced, conventions-breaking girl.  I’ve been trying to learn to love Annie.

She gets on my nerves to no end, so it is taking a lot of practice.  We are good friends with her parents, so we see a lot of each other.  I try to slow her down long enough to talk to her, to see what makes her tick.  I’m the free-spirit in our family, so I’m not starting from scratch.  And, with all the talk about love being a choice and an active verb, I am trying my best to learn to love Annie.  All I can say is, thank God I’ve got 10 or more years to work on this.

Now, I know that Zaphod will not one day marry Annie, specifically, but I have no doubt it will be a girl of her type.  So, if I could learn to love a crazy, never-stop, damn the rules girl now, maybe I could be more welcoming when the real time comes.

This end the ride through my very strange thought processes.  Please stay inside the cars until they come to a complete stop.

Told you I’m  insane.