Point: Meeting the parents of your significant other is terrible.

In the four years I’ve been here, my parents have never visited me during Parent’s Weekend. Not once. It may sound sad, but it’s sort of a blessing in disguise. I’ve found Parent’s Weekend is a lot less stressful when you’re not busy trying to entertain two cranky bickering middle-aged Baby Boomers who complain that ethnic food gives them gas. You don’t have to clean your room. You don’t have to make awkward introductions. Or explain what a gender neutral bathroom is; much less convince your parents to use one. The one drawback of this is you don’t have any parents to take you out to dinner on Saturday night. But this is solved easily enough by mooching off your friends and their parents. Everyone feels sorry for the kid without any parents. I call it the Oliver! Effect.

The trouble begins when your Significant Other wants you to go to dinner with her parents. It’s a very different sort of thing than going out to dinner with your freshman roommate’s parents. You aren’t sleeping with your freshman roommate. Or maybe you are. I’m not. (The fact that he used to masturbate on my bed being another matter entirely.)

Upon meeting your Significant Other’s parents for the first time, there’s a lot of pressure. You have to remember proper etiquette for all sorts of situations, make witty banter, and prevent exposing your genitalia at all times. It’s a lot to do, and usually all you have to work with is a cloth napkin and a water glass.

There’s really no way to win. If the parents hate you, you’re pretty much doomed. Screw up at dinner and chances are you’ll be chloroformed on the ride back from the restaurant. Or be made to suffer endless passive-aggressive putdowns at the hands of your S.O.’s mother. But if you impress your S.O’s parents with your immense knowledge of 15th century Flemish history and charming stories about that time you “accidentally” went to a brothel, your S.O.’s parents will start talking about how great you are. They’ll use words like “sweet”, “sensitive” and “pretentious, but in a nice non-threatening way”. And no one wants to date someone like that. As soon as your S.O.’s parents start saying how much they like you, you’re doomed. You’re going to get dumped within a week. If this starts happening, really your only hope is to sucker-punch your S.O.’s father as soon as possible and hope he isn’t a Marine. Because if he is, your ass is grass.

Counterpoint: Meeting the parents of your significant other is really, really terrible and also very awkward.

I mean, I never know what to do with my hands.