When my oldest daughter was 17 she started hanging around this boy named Moony. It might as well have been Loony, I thought. He was six-feet-two-inches tall but had a pronounced slouch that made him seem like he was deliberately shaving off a few inches from his height. He had unkempt bushy curls that seemed to have sprouted accidentally from his scalp, well against his wishes. His skin color was on the south side of pale. He sported a goatee that appeared to have only five strands of scraggly hair, each growing toward a different direction. Think "Weird Al Yankovic," that irreverent cover artist who made a killing by spoofing Michael Jackson’s Beat It.
He wore long shorts that fell four inches above his psychedelic shin-high socks, exposing a flash of pallid skin on his legs. He wore shirts in migraine-inducing colors and patterns that screamed, "Hey, everyone, look at me!" He might have been a quiet boy but his entire packaging could provoke even the most staid of personalities.
But the coup de grâce had nothing to do with his physical attributes. He was a college dropout with a rumored history of recreational drug use. So it hit me like an intensity-seven earthquake when Francesca casually mentioned, "Mom, Moony and I have kind of hooked up." First, I had to research what the term "hook up" meant. And then I promptly had a coronary, which I thankfully survived. Anyway, I was a ball of nerves when I rushed to our counselor’s office. I spewed smoke and fire as I told her about Francesca’s boyfriend. Having helped us navigate through the maze of our mother-daughter issues, I regularly looked to her for sound advice. But not that time! I wanted her blessing for the single-bullet-in-the-head, execution-style murder of Moony. No such luck.
She dismissed my concerns with a snicker and a wave of the hand. She said, "So what if he’s out of school? Even the great Einstein and the great Dickens were dropouts." She embarked on a lengthy monologue, completely dismissing my irrational ramblings from the equation. "Will Francesca marry him? No. Will he father her children? No! So what’s the problem?" she asked. "Stop hoping for that Harvard-educated, Boston Brahmin in Brooks Brothers to come and sweep your daughter off her feet. That’s absolutely not her type, that’s yours."
She instructed me to kill Moony with kindness instead, in order to give Francesca the liberty to get to know him in her own way and for me to trust that she would, in the end, make the right choice.
He frequented the house and occasionally joined us for dinner. I would sit at the table with my toes curled in disgust, wearing a perpetual smile while entertaining thoughts of lacing each of his spoonfuls with cyanide.
Five months later, Francesca was older and wiser, and Moony was history. I sat her down to earnestly discuss the mechanics of choosing an appropriate mate. I made it clear that lineage, social status and statements of account were absolutely of no concern to us; what she should look for was someone with a good heart, someone well-educated, with a good grasp of the work ethic, industrious and self-made. "Steer clear of spoiled beneficiaries of the Daddy and Mommy Warbucks’ charitable institution," I most emphatically declared.
Apparently, I failed to make myself clear enough!
A few years later she was commissioned by a local magazine to write the cover story on Manila’s hot rock band du jour, Smashed. She conducted two interviews with the five-member band and did the standard-operational-procedure backstage concert observation. Her article debuted to decent reviews and as her writing flourished, so did another relationship that she had kept secret at first.
When she finally asked me to meet Mr. Right Now, I was hesitant but she had me convinced by insisting that this boy had all the qualities of a "proper mate." He was industrious. He worked until late at night. He was a UP graduate. He had a steady, high-paying job and he had bought his own car with his hard-earned money.
He came at the appointed time. Our doorbell rang and Francesca ushered him in to meet me. "Mom," she said. "Meet Loyd." What stood before me was something I had never, ever encountered even in my most horrifying nightmares. He was about five feet three inches tall. He had electric blue hair bunched up in sections, which were made to jut out in stiff points with the aid of gallons of styling gel. He was dark with a wide toothy smile and a gentle face. He had an earring on each lobe and (sing it nursery rhyme-style) "a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose, and a ring at the end of his nose."
He had on a pair of trousers, several inches too long at the hem. They bunched up in folds of excess fabric on the floor, making his legs seem much shorter than they already were. He was a midget Tupac Shakur! (You know, parents: the celebrated and gunned-down gangsta rapper with the social conscience.) I tried my best not to stare and the effort, I thought, was quite successful. "Loyd is the drummer of the band I wrote about, Mom. You know…Smashed." That news flash smashed me like a five-ton load of bricks! No wonder Francesca said he worked hard until late at night  he was in a rock band!
As soon as he had left, I accosted my daughter about her choice and her reply was, "You said steady job, work ethic, blah, blah, blah. You didn’t say ‘No blue hair, body piercing and tattoos.’" It was, therefore, entirely my fault!
I was livid and emotional and I said in a tone as sarcastic as I could manage: "But surely you can do much better than that; someone just a little bit more handsome, perhaps?" To which she replied: "And you married Brad Pitt, right?" Grrrrrrr!
Six months later, she got tired of the perks that came with being a rock star’s girlfriend. She said to me, ever so casually, "You were right, he wasn’t cute at all." And I never saw him again.
There have been many other incidents involving my two daughters and the dating issue  some good, some regrettable. A couple of their friends were even wonderful to the point of driving me to depression after their alliances had reached their shelf life. I was the one who had grown attached to them.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, parents should never lose sight of the fact that we have to trust our children. Not that we should ever be remiss in guidance, but we must, to the best of our abilities, reserve the right to judge, to intervene and to raise hell until the last possible moment, and only if standing back and giving them a chance to make their own decisions will clearly lead to irretrievable consequences.
Other than that, we must keep in mind that our children are clearly not our enemies; it is their boyfriends at whom our eyebrows are raised. If we accost them for their bad choices then we just might push them further away from what we consider the "right path." Let us tread gently for we may be crushing delicate spirits here.
But then again, if you really hate your daughter’s boyfriend’s guts, be resourceful. Corner the boyfriend; tell him to make himself scarce; give him an offer he can’t refuse. If he declines, scout the metropolis and find a Luca Brazzi persona who is willing, for a reasonable amount of money, to abduct Romeo and make him "sleep with the fishes"! (Thanks to The Godfather for that useful and colorful quote).