A relationship in the novel I'm proofreading has reminded me of one of my favorite stories from my teenage years. What's more, I'm going to tell it.
I was born and raised in Seattle. You probably know that it's a large city: a metropolitan area of a couple million at the time I lived there. I met my first girlfriend when I was eighteen -- I've told the essential part of that story before -- and because we met as fellow amateur cast participants at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, we had little background or history in common: not neighborhood, nor school, nor clubs or church or activities, no internet back then, no shared friendships. I was from Ballard, in northwest Seattle, and she was from Duvall, so far out in the sticks that at that time it was barely suburban, edging on rural.
Several weeks into the relationship, Marie was driving us somewhere, and she said, "We're really close to where my dad works. I'll swing by so you can see it." We were in Juanita, one of many enclaves on the east side of Lake Washington. I was up for whatever she wanted to do, and I didn't know what her dad did for a living. When we drove up to a grocery store -- a Tradewell -- and parked, it took me a few seconds, out of context, to understand that I recognized it.
"Your dad works here?" I said. "Mm-hm," she said.
"My dad," I said slowly, "manages this store."
As it happened, neither of our dads was working that day, so there was no point to going in. That night we went to a party of our Rocky Horror friends. There was a huge thunderstorm, and I was effectively trapped on the east side of the lake for the night. I was happy to be trapped in someone else's house with Marie and no adults around, but my parents were understandably unimpressed, and I knew I was going to be in trouble when I got home. But I also knew that the fact that our dads worked together would be an amusing surprise and a useful distraction.
I was right about the surprise, not so much about the amusing. "So, hey, Dad," I said once I had a reasonable opening, "you know how Marie's last name is Bauer? Guess where her dad works?" Just a little pause here, of course, and then: "Your store!"
Dad stared at me. "Marie is Jack* Bauer's daughter?" He stood there for a few more seconds, then simply turned and walked out of the room without saying anything more.
It wasn't the reaction I'd expected. "What's that about?" I said to my mom.
Mom has a matter-of-fact tone that's so deadpan she almost sounds cheerful. "Well, your father and Mr. Bauer don't get along very well."
It turned out that Marie's dad was the veteran of the store, had been there for decades. My dad was several years younger than Marie's dad, and was brought in from another store to be the manager, something that Marie's dad resented (I gather) and could not forgive. And I suppose it's likely that they didn't like each other for other reasons.
The next day Marie told me that she'd gone home with the same amusing news, blissfully unaware of her father's feelings about my father. Mr. Bauer, a gruff man who I have to say always treated me decently, apparently sat in silence for a long minute after hearing this news, then said, "Must be fifty thousand boys your age in this city. And you have to choose the boss's son."
Naturally, teenagers being what they are, we thought it was fun to drop in on them at the store after that whenever we could.
*I don't actually remember Marie's dad's given name.
