Personal Initiation

Unfortunately, due to a very sick girlfriend, I will not be attending class today. But in spite of that I still have my computer, and she happens to be a part of my subject so I figured I would do a little blogging.

Now we were asked to do a modern day initiation rite that we have gone through in our lives and I immediately thought of the first time I met my girlfriends family. This to me is one of those things that we all experience at sometime or another. At some point in a relationship it becomes time to meet your significant others' family. They've heard about you, you've heard about them, and now you have to essentially bring these two worlds together. You each have to go through a sort of initiation where you're introduced and you kind of feel each other out, checking boundaries, and trying to find out where you fit in this new "tribe". Sometimes this is easy, yet it can be awkward and painful so to me that makes this the perfect modern day initiation rite.


Now the first time I met my girlfriend's family it was the 4th of July weekend, and we drove to her home to stay with them for the weekend. So she is the youngest daughter of 13 children, and I was a little nervous because in my head I knew that they thought I was essentially stealing their baby. Thankfully only a few siblings were going to be there this weekend, so I thought I might be able to get off lightly, little did I know that this was not going to be the case. As soon as we walked into the door I was met by one of the older sisters (refered to as R) and sister-in-law. The first thing they did was call me by my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's name (Zach) and things began to proceed down hill from there. I quickly learned that this was going to be a trial by fire, that even the Spanish Inquisition would have been proud of.

Her sister R, was one of those people that absolutely loved to push boundaries. Now my own family can be quite a handful, so thankfully I was prepared for some harsh blows. R spent much of our first afternoon drilling me with questions, who are you, where are you from, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? I handled much of this with ease, taking the occasional ex-boyfriend jokes in stride, while my girlfriend became increasingly annoyed at her sister (as sisters are wont to do) until eventually the straw that broke the camels back appeared. R noticing that my girlfriend had become increasingly perturbed, looked at me and Said "AJ, why can't you make her happy, Zach used to make her happy" at this point all activity ceased and my girlfriend exploded! (verbally not literally) She then ran out of the room and refused to speak to anyone except her mother. Which of course made R mad because now mom was mad at her. So we had to spend the rest of the evening in a mixture of awkward silences and angry stares accross the room.
Eventually things were patched up and it was time for bed, now up to this point there hadn't been much conversation between the Father and I, but to make up for that he arranged a pallet for me on the floor in front of his massive gun safe. I knew this would be a great weekend. The next morning I awoke and had some coffee with my girlfriend's brother and friend, which was great because we got along well. I just knew my luck was turning around and today would be awesome. Then the telephone rang, Mother and Father had just left to go to the store, and Father had backed his truck into a silver car in the driveway, He was in a hurry so he'd take care of it later... Of course the silver car was my car. Despite this and the many other things that occured over the weekend, I was able to pull through and not run away crying like a small child, this cemented my place in the family, because ties forged in battle are stronger than steel, and to this day I can't help but laugh at it all, because once you hit rock bottom there's no where to go but up!
(Disclaimer: I love my girlfriend's family, they're great and I wouldn't have them any other way, but they sure know how to give a guy Hell)

Thinking back on this now I see that this was definately a sort of initiation. While lacking in physical pain, there were definately some tense moments emotionally. These types of meetings are really like I said earlier, a kind of welcoming of someone into the tribe. The family really tests you to see if you are "worthy" of being with someone from within their circle, sure the test may be if you can take a joke, or what your intentions are for the future, but they really are trying to see if you can contribute to the overall "wealth" of the family. That fact is what makes this an initiation, because it still seems kind of primal a way, and you know that although we as a culture may have changed, there were still guys thousands of years ago that had to prove to a family that they were worth something in order to court a daughter.