About twenty years ago, back when Caity was in high school and just sixteen, she came bouncing down the stairs one day and announced that she had a new boyfriend.

   “Great!  What’s his name?”

   “Aram.”

   “What an unusual and beautiful name!,” I said.  “What’s his second name?”

   “Kachadurian.”

   “Aram Kachadurian, Aram Kachadurian.  Why does that name sound familiar to me?”

   “It’s a classical music composer,” she explained.

   “Caity, you’re going out with a classical music composer?!?  Those are all older men.  And they’re dead!  You know your mother and I don’t want you going out with older men, especially dead ones!”

   “No, it’s just the same name as the composer.  Aram’s not dead.”

   “You’re sure of this?  He’s not dead?”

   “I’m sure.”

   “Okay, then, that’s a relief.  Kachadurian sounds like an Armenian name—is he Armenian?”

   “Yes, his dad’s Armenian.”

Now this was terrific news.  We had a friend in law school—Ed—who was Armenian, and he was a great guy.  Very funny, smart, not bad-looking, good manners, etc.  And rich!  His folks were, like, bazillionaires, I think!  They’ll pay for the wedding!!  I’ll chip in for the flowers.  This is fantastic!  These thoughts ran through my brain in about 2 seconds.  But all I said to Caity was—“Sounds great – I look forward to meeting him.”  And she said, “I’m sure you will soon.”  And that was that.

A couple of days later I met Aram.  I could tell pretty much right away that he was very different from Ed.  He was nothing at all like Ed.  He was the exact opposite of Ed.  He was “Op-Ed.”

First of all, he arrived on a blazing red motorcycle.  This is not good.  You do not want your 16-year-old daughter appearing in the same paragraph as a motorcycle.  (He also had a truck.)

Next, there was his head.  It was shaved completely bald.  This is not necessarily a disaster.  It’s a style these days, and he could be on his high school swim team or something, but it was certainly striking and made me hope he wasn’t one of those skinhead-Nazi types.  (As it turned out, he was on the high school wrestling team, though that doesn’t completely rule out the Nazis.) 

There were some tattoos, but these weren’t too bad – just a couple, and fairly tasteful.  No swastikas or snakes, and nothing gang-related, thank goodness, not that I could know for sure.  The piercings, though, were quite numerous and all over the place.  Eyebrows, lips, tongue – just all over the place.  I cast my thoughts back to the the great men of history:  Thomas Jefferson . . .  George Washington . . . Ben Franklin . . . Derek Jeter . . . . none of these men were pierced.  (Alright, maybe Jeter a small tasteful earring, but you get my point.)  There was no association of greatness with piercing.  I put this on the debit side, no question.

He joined us for lunch.  I never saw anyone eat like him.  He looked at the silverware like he never saw a spoon or fork before.  It was like in “The Little Mermaid” when Ariel found a fork at the bottom of the sea and had no idea what it was.  He ate everything with his hands – even things like rice.  I gave Caity a look that said “What’s with his eating?” and she gave me a look back that I’m fairly certain I interpreted correctly as: “I don’t know, but if you say anything about it I will kill you in your sleep tonight and you know I’m not kidding.”   

I let it go.

His language was as you might have guessed.  “Hey, can I get the fucking salt?”  I said, “Aram, you should be economical.  Suppose you could buy something for ten dollars or get the exact same item for eight, you’d pay eight, right?”  And he said of course.  “Well, ‘can I get the salt’ and ‘can I get the fucking salt’ will both get you the salt – you don’t need the extra word.”  “I get it,” he said, “that’s good.”  Two minutes later:  “Hey, can I get the fucking mustard?” 

We were out once and when we came home we found that Aram had left a note for Caity on the front door.  I was just going to glance at it to make sure there was no emergency, but the horror of it drew me in.  Every word had something terribly wrong with it.  I sat down with a pencil and paper to try to work out what it said, like when the British captured a German document during World War II and turned it over to their cryptographers to decipher.  It took me a good fifteen minutes to come up with the following essential points (with only about 70% certainty): (1) Aram had come by earlier. (2) No one was home.  (3) He’ll call or visit later.  I showed it to Linda incredulously.  “Look at this!  If you held a gun to his head I don’t think he could spell “cat” correctly!”  

We had absolutely nothing in common.  He wasn’t a sports fan.  We had nothing to talk about.  If I was trapped alone with him it was torture.  I had to make up some excuse to run away.  “The upstairs closet, the hinges, I have to, you know . . . make yourself at home . . .” and I’d flee upstairs, or sometimes just drive away with absolutely nowhere to go.

Our initial response to the relationship (insanely), was to wave it off.  A little teen romance.  It couldn’t possibly last.  She’ll end it in a matter of days.  But the days and weeks turned to months, and it was only getting worse.  Finally, Linda said I had to talk to Caity, to convince her how wrong Aram was for her and to break up with him.  I said, “Linda, has it ever happened in the history of Earth that a father talked a teenage daughter out of a boyfriend?”  “Well, we have to do something,” she “reasoned,” and she thought I stood a better chance than she did.  So I picked a time when Caity seemed in a relaxed mood (a “window of lucidity”), and we had a little talk.

“Hi Beaner.  Got a minute?”

“Hi Dad. Sure, what’s up?”

“It’s about Aram.”

“OK”

“Let’s take a moment and visualize Aram.  Like pretend he’s standing right here near the couch.”

“OK”

“Good.  Now on this other side of the room, let’s pretend we have Claire’s boyfriend Tommy, and Meredith’s boyfriend Greg, and maybe Tricia’s boyfriend Billy.  Got it?”

“OK”

“Good.  Now, looking calmly and objectively at all of these fine young men, doesn’t it seem clear to you that Aram is very different from these others, and in fact FROM EVERY OTHER PERSON ON THE PLANET EARTH??!!??  HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE DATING THIS GUY?”

But all she said was, “No, Dad, you don’t really know him.  He’s good.  There’s a lot to him.”  And I said, “I DON’T KNOW HIM? (I was still speaking in capital letters.) WHAT IS THERE TO KNOW? HE CAN’T SPELL CAT! HE DOESN’T USE SILVERWARE!

But she just repeated that I don’t know him, that I was wrong about him.

I finally just told her to be careful.

“I will Dad,” she lied.

“I know you will Beaner,” I lied right back.

And the months stretched on.  They spent all of their free time together.  Caity went away with Aram and his mom to West Virginia for a weeklong summer trip.  Aram joined us on a winter ski weekend.  She skipped school on his birthday so they could “hang out.”  Stuff like that.

And the dark clouds of Aram settled over us and we were very concerned.  I’d say we settled into a long-term “Level 3” depression.  “Level One” is something like a kidnapping.  The police and local media get involved.  Your life is a relentless shrieking nightmare and you can only eat or sleep with the help of medical intervention: intravenous or prescription drugs.  “Level Two” is when the doctor tells you she found a “bump” on an X-ray.  “Bump” is the happy term, like, “Oh this ride is bumpy, or Look at the clown’s bumpy head!”  But the word they write on the chart that you glance at is “lesion,” and then they say the most frightening words in the language:  “It’s probably nothing.”  Then they say, “But let’s just run about $15,000 worth of tests to rule some things out, all of which involve certain death.”  So for the next few days until the biopsy results come back (negative, of course), you can think of nothing else.  In a Level Two depression, though, the police and local media are not involved.  You can eat and even sleep with maybe just some over-the-counter help. 

“Level Three,” what we had with Aram, allows you to eat and sleep okay, and there are stretches during the day when you don’t dwell on it.  But there’s a dark cloud overhead at all times, and it’s what you fall asleep worrying about at night, and it’s what you think about first thing in the morning.  (Level Four depression, BTW, is all other times – it’s how things are with teenagers in the house when everything seems to be going well, at least on the surface. It’s the best you can hope for.)

Sam’s bar mitzvah was coming up and Caity said she’d like Aram to come.  I started in about how he’d have to dress up a little and watch his language, and she said, “Don’t worry, he has Jewish neighbors.  He’s been to bar mitzvahs and knows all about them.  He’ll be fine.”  And he was.  He looked quite sharp and was quite respectful, as far as I could tell.  But he must have made a bit of an impression, because the following week we received from quite a smattering of aunts, cousins, etc. a good half dozen of what I came to call “that young man” phone calls.  The calls would start off saying what a wonderful time they had and how beautifully Sam did (blah blah blah).  Then, about 5 minutes in there’d be a pause followed by: “That young man with Caitlin . . . are they serious?”  “Aram?” I’d respond innocently. “Nah, it’s just a teen romance.  How long can it last?  Why?  Didn’t you like him?”   

And the months rolled on and they celebrated their first anniversary.  They fantasy-talked about getting married (eventually), but no kids – Aram didn’t want to have kids.  Caity was now a senior at Chatham High (Go Cougars!), and Aram graduated from Watchung Hills High School (for those of you who don’t believe in miracles – he graduated!).  He was working part-time at a nursing home nearby and going to Raritan Valley Community College.  Caity would graduate HS that June.

Then, one day something happened that changed everything for me.

The event started as this story did with Caity bouncing down the steps. 

    “Dad, can you drive me over to Aram’s?  His truck’s being fixed.” 

    “Sure.  When do you want to go?

    “Well, I still have to put my makeup on . . . but I can do that in the car.  Let’s go now.”

    “Fine.”

So she gathered up a huge bag of powders, creams, various implements, etc., and we jumped into the car.  It was an eight-mile drive.  She set a mirror up on her lap as a base and put a whole array of little things around.  Then she took a big dark pencil out of the bag and started writing on her face.

“Caity!  What are you doing?  You’re writing on your face!?!”

“Dad.  How long have you lived in America?  This is eye liner.  Everyone uses it.”

“Everyone?  You mean to tell me your mother writes on her face with big pencils like that?”

“Of course she does.”

“Alright, I guess.  It’s your face.”

She refrained from a more abusive response to my moronism either out of pity at my hopeless obtuseness, or since I was at that moment in the act of doing her a favor.

In any event, we arrived at Aram’s, and Caity said she wasn’t done, but she could finish up at a table in the front yard—there was no need for me to wait.  So we said our goodbyes, and I told her to call if she needed a ride later.

Now Aram’s driveway isn’t the narrow type that you drive up and then back out of.  It’s wide.  So you actually turn entirely around so you can leave facing the street.  This was good because the traffic was heavy sometimes and it could be hard to back out into it.  So I maneuvered around to face the street.  At this point, by pure coincidence—I don’t think I could have managed it if I tried—my side-view mirror was exactly angled so it faced Aram’s front door.  And as I glanced at it, the door opened and out popped Aram.  He couldn’t tell that I could see him because the car was facing away from the house.  And Caity didn’t see him since she was still busy finishing with her makeup.  So what I saw could not have been a little show he was putting on for anyone.

There was a very small front porch with three steps leading down to the front yard.  He took the first step, and then noticed Caity at the table in the yard.  At that point he stopped, and before walking down the last two steps he did a little dance: A little happy dance, with his arms swinging sideways and his legs buckling at the knees.  It was nothing really.  It looked silly.  It probably lasted under two seconds.  But those two seconds changed everything for me.  I suddenly saw him through Caity’s eyes.  And I began to think, maybe we were wrong to be looking for someone who can spell—everyone uses spellcheck these days anyway, right?  And maybe we were wrong to be looking for someone with good table manners.  I mean, really, what could be less important than that?  Maybe we should be looking for someone who, when you come to visit on a lazy Sunday morning with nothing special going on, is so happy to see you, is so brimming with joy at the mere fact that you exist, that he can’t walk down three stupid steps without exploding into a paroxysm of flailing arms and legs.  Maybe that’s not so bad.  Most people do a lot worse.

And from that moment on, I was perfectly fine with Aram.  The dark clouds parted and lifted.  Because I knew that he would never do anything to hurt Caity; that he would always, in his crazy way, try to make her happy; and that if he and I had nothing in common, then we had one thing in common: we both appreciated to the core what an extraordinary gift it was to have Caity in our lives.

* * * * ** * * *

They were together for a few more months, but then Caity broke it off.  She would be heading off to college in the fall and didn’t want a relationship at home to hold her back.  She was pretty shaken up after she told him.  They got together a few times after that, as friends.  He helped me pick up a couch with his truck.  He graduated from Raritan Valley — good for him! — and the last we heard of him, he was somewhere in the south with Homeland Security (I’m not kidding – feel safe?), in a position, I would bet, that is not overly dependent upon writing skills.

---

Thanks for dropping in. See you tomorrow!