Meet The Parents

Today is my beautiful wife's birthday. I'll withhold printing her age, since that is strictly off limits according to the Husband Code, but let's just say she is still much younger than I am. It's hard to believe we've know each other for almost ten years. It seems just like yesterday I was standing outside her apartment door with a bouquet of flowers about to take her on our first date. How time flies.

Last September, we celebrated our five year anniversary, and I have to say, it's been five of the best years of my life. We've laughed together. Cried together. Fought over the TV remote together. We've traveled even traveled a small portion of the world together; from the tropical, sugar-white beaches of the Caribbean to the frigid, wind swept tundra of Alaska. We've had a beautiful child together, who brings even more joy and happiness into our already fruitful lives. I'm not sure if there is any kind of Top Ten List for great marriages, but I'd like to think we'd be somewhere at the top- squeezed in between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

Now I was never the most suave guy around the ladies. I always felt awkward and clumsy, never knowing exactly what to say or do, which was probably the reason I was a bachelor until I was thirty years old. This was especially true went I met Danielle. I was head over heels when I first laid eyes on her, but if I was to win her over I knew I had my work cut out for me. We were not exactly, as they say, two peas in a pod.

If you were to go online and Google the term opposites attract, the first thing that would pop up right behind that god-awful Paula Abdul song from the '80's, would be a picture of Danielle and myself. We are the quintessential odd couple.


She was raised in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado- a city girl, where her idea great outdoors was sun bathing at the community pool. She lived with her family in a quiet little neighborhood, where she spent her teenage years frequenting the local malls for deals on brand name shoes and lounging in the urban watering holes of gourmet coffee chains. I on the other hand was reared on the butt end of a gravel, dirt road in a rural farming community with no post office and only one stop light. I sometimes feel that our marriage is like an episode of Green Acres-she's Eva Gabor, I'm Eddie Albert, and I supposed our dog Kasey plays the Arnold Ziffer role.

Needless to say, deer hunting was about as foreign to my wife and her family as a Sonny's Real Pit Barbecue would be to the residents of Kabul, Afghanistan.

After dating for several months and everything going as smooth as clock work, I felt that it was time for her to finally meet my parents. Now up till them I was doing my best to subdue my redneck/hunter tendencies around her, by acting as smooth and sophisticated as George Clooney in an Ocean's movie. I had also been purposely editing my numerous hunting yarns that I spun on a regular basis by keeping them "family friendly," and strictly Disney G-Rated material, so as not to frighten her off. In her mind, I had painted a visual image that deer hunting was a harmless, non-violent sport, in which the noble stag willingly gives up his life for the mighty hunter and passes peacefully and painless away without shed a single drop of blood.


That image was about to be completely shattered.

It was late autumn back in '99. Danielle and I had been dating for several months at that point and I figured it was time to take her home to North Carolina for the ceremonial "meeting of the parents." We had planned to stay the weekend in Mills River, taking in the fall colors and cool weather, and to give Mom and Dad a chance to meet my girl from Colorado that had been talking so much about.

I picked Danielle up at her apartment in Greenville after work on a Friday afternoon. As she exited her front door, I was a little taken back by her attire. She was dressed to the hilt-adorned in black designer pants, over top of black leather boots with high heels with an ornate fur overcoat. She looked as though she was ready for the night life of Manhattan. Don't get me wrong she looked gorgeous, but in my opinion a little over dressed for South Mills River.

Obviously, she was wanting to make an impression on my parents, which made me proud. She climbed in to my Chevy pick-up and after storing her bags in the back seat, we headed up the mountain into beautiful November sunset.

It was a good hour after dark by time we pulled into my parents driveway at the tail-end of Wolf Pack Trail. As we were unloading our luggage, I noticed there was a faint light on in the woodshed at the top of the hill and it being black powder season at the time, I immediately knew what that light signified.

"Somebody's done killed them a deer, " I exclaimed in my worst backwoods grammar, which I tend to resort to when I'm back home in my rural surroundings.

"Come, on, let's go see how big he is." My slick George Clooney facade was beginning to quickly crumble.


"Umm....okay...I guess." Danielle said tentatively while struggling to retrieve her designer Coach bag from the back seat.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her up the steep driveway. She struggled to keep up to my fast pace since her high heels were having a hard time getting traction in the loose gravel.

As we reached the top of the hill I noticed a large Dodge Ram pickup was parked next to the woodshed. I immediately recognized that the truck belong to Chip Koontz. Still holding Danielle by her delicate hand, I opened the woodshed door to find Dad and Chip standing next to a freshly skinned deer carcass with blood up to their elbows.

"Hey Chip! Hey Dad! So who got this one?," I asked.

"Hey Bud, " said Dad, "Chip here busted this one. Pretty nice little buck."

"My first shot hit him a little too far back, " Chip said matter-of-factly. "Gut shot him, so I made a mess of his innards. Lord I hate that smell."

The putrid smell of guts, blood and deer feces hung heavy in the air and mingled with the delicate fragrance of Chanel perfume. It was then I suddenly realized with some embarrassment that I had forgotten to introduce my new girlfriend.

"Dad. Chip. I would like for you to meet Dannielle Crout."

Chip slip his arm out of the buck's chest cavity and plopped a portion of the deers right lung into the gut bucket at his feet and reached to shake Danielle''s hand. Danielle stood frozen, her mouth agape and looked as though every once of blood had drained from her angelic face.

"Nice to meet you Danielle," Chip said as blood and wet lung tissue dripped from his outstretched hand. Danielle stepped back in horror and simply waved politely in his direction.

"Nice...to meet...you." She said timidly.

Dad was busy cutting off the bucks tarsal glands and waved in Danielle's direction.

"Good to finally meet you Danielle," He said while sawing vigorously through the deer's gore-soaked hide. "Rick's told us a lot about you. By the way, you know what these are?" Dad held held out two furry lumps of deer hide in front of her. "These are tarsal glands. They're the bucks scent glands. I'm cuttin' them off for my cousin Ray. He likes to tie them to his boots when he goes hunting. Says it attracts other bucks and hides his scent."

You remember the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Remember the scene where the heroine first encounters the inbred, mutant, cannibal known as LeatherFace? That's pretty much the exact expression my future wife had on her face at that moment. In fact, looking back on it, I often wonder how she ended up marring me at all. I can't imagine what was going through her mind as she watched Dad and Chip, skin and quarter a deer right before her eyes.

It wasn't exactly the first impression I had in mind, but looking back, it was probably for the best. Right then and there, she knew what she was getting in to, if she decided to stick it out with me. Ultimately though, I think what really saved the relationship, which was still in it's delicate infancy, was the next morning when Mom prepared some fresh venison tenderloin biscuits for breakfast. Danielle took one bite and that's all it took. The rest as they say, is history.