Aside from the first date, one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in any new relationship is, of course, meeting the parents. This is what I did last night. And, fortunately for me, it didn’t end in a Ben Stiller-esque comedy where I set Mother Dearest’s hair on fire with cheap parlour tricks or inadvertently tell a dirty joke about goat-humping. No, it actually went rather swimmingly.

The weird thing about the encounter is the noticeable disparity between the boy’s ‘rents and my own. The boy has visited my family home many times now and still has yet to have a full conversation with either of my parents. In contrast, one night with his parents has given me an insight into his family and the person he is. This could be the fact that my parents are Asian and Austere; his parents, WASP and Welcoming. It is the commonly seen battle of the AAs and WWs. (If only we could successfully mix the two to get A&Ws. Mmm, root beer…)

This is the only interracial relationship that I’ve been in. I’ve dated Caucasian guys in the past, but never seriously dated one long enough to introduce him to my family and vice versa. With both of us born and raised in Canada, you’d think that we’d come out relatively the same or at least knowledgeable of other cultures. However, the boy is from Montreal and, as much as Montrealers pride themselves on living in such a metropolitan city, when he first met me, he was shocked that I didn’t speak English with a thick Chinese accent. The cliché kind of bugged me at first, but I’ve since learned to accept that he was an ign’ant fool and I am now here to enlighten the shit of out him.

At any rate, meeting the parents was a’ight. When I asked the boy what they thought of me, he told me, “They said you were friendly. And short.” I guess being an amiable midget isn’t the worst thing they could have said, so I’ll cling to that notion.