Love is a Battlefield

This was going to be the first time that I'd be meeting Bruce's girlfriend.

This was going to the first time that Bruce and his girlfriend would be meeting each other's parents.

Bruce's brothers were not going to be there.

You would think that Bruce would've given me the head's up about these things (like when he told me about the weather for the weekend), but other than knowing that I'd be meeting Christina, I had no idea what was in store for me once I touched down in Pittsburgh - it was kind of a rude awakening. I already knew it was going to be a fast paced weekend since I was in town for graduation, but if I had known the weekend was going to be this intense, I probably would've tried harder to fall asleep on my red eye flight than sitting through the abomination known as National Treasure.

I found out Bruce's brothers weren't in Pittsburgh as I got off the bus from the airport. He told me as I was being rushed pretty much straight to the ceremony. He didn't divulge the part about the families meeting until after the ceremony. I felt perpetually in a state of motion the entire day so I don't even think I really reacted when he told me. I felt like I was watching Black Hawk Down, where at the beginning, the view just gets dropped in the middle of battle with no backstory preceding it. Not to say that there punches thrown or people yelling at each other in this meeting of families, but to say things were a little tense would be a gross understatement. If Bruce's brothers had been there, it would've made things a lot more comfortable for me. I would've had friends to talk to, since I knew that Bruce was very preoccupied dealing with the anxiety of getting to know his girlfriend's parents. Bruce's brothers being there would've also made my presence seem normal, but since his siblings weren't there and his best friend from across the country was, it seemed a little odd, I suppose. (Insert Brokeback Mountain joke here).

While Bruce's brothers weren't present, Christina's siblings were. The oldest of Christina's siblings was her sister who I believe was 16. This gave me someone to talk to so I could distract myself from the scene at hand, but at the same time there was a new level of discomfort. It's not easy to make small talk at a lunch with a teenager you've just met when you're 22 and their whole family is at the table, but it sure beats having to be part of the other conversation. "Ryan, do you have any stories about Bruce?" "Yeah, he didn't tell me that this lunch was going to happen and this is super uncomfortable. That's the kind of stand up guy that he is."

Awkward conversations aside, it seemed like the families were getting along and there wasn't going to be any drama. That was, until, Bruce's nose started to bleed. While I'm positive that there was no judgment passed on Bruce for this (no one thought he had a cocaine addiction), I'm sure Bruce was freaking out by this unwelcome little event. Ever since Bruce was a child, when his nose would bleed, it wouldn't clot as quickly as most nose bleeds, so it's not like he could run to the bathroom for a few minutes and be fine. Obviously, Christina's parents weren't going to hold this against him, but when anyone is in the middle of a situation like this, anything that goes wrong will undoubtedly make them feel like the whole world is crumbling to the ground.

Fortunately that was the only hiccup that we encountered at lunch. The check came and parents from both sides playfully argued over who was going to foot the bill. It was a relatively tame argument compared to the ones that my mom and his mom would get into back when we were kids living in Minnesota. Those arguments would often spill into the parking lot with one mom trying to stuff mom into the other's pocket, purse, and whatnot. While those arguments were never heated, they were embarrassing and drew way too much attention to us. I took the gentle sparring over the bill at lunch as a positive sign that the two families liked each other.

I would be asked throughout the weekend how I thought things went. While I knew this weekend was going to be a momentous occasion for Bruce, I didn't know the half of it. I knew Bruce would be taking his first step into the "real world" that weekend but Bruce had plans to take a much bigger leap that weekend. Though Bruce did shed some blood, he survived, and now he can share this story about how ballsy he was at his college graduation. He's got a witness and he made a believer out of me.