Mum strikes match and we get burned
THE actress Sally Field is one of a small group of people who can pretty much do whatever they want because they’re so beloved.
We grant them immunity from the usual life rules and guidelines, and forgive behaviour we’d condemn in others, because somehow, from them it’s just charming.
So isn’t it just charming that this week Sally Field matchmade between her son and the Olympic skater he fancied, Adam Rippon, online, where everyone in the world can see?
Mothers who aren’t Sally Field, however, should steer well clear of this kind of behaviour. It’s deeply traumatising to their children... in other words – no, mum, I’m still not over it.
Before I was snapped up by my current, lucky husband, I met my mum for dinner in a restaurant where a live jazz trio was playing (I wouldn’t have agreed to this venue if I’d known that in advance, obviously).
“The double bass player is hunky isn’t he?” my mum said, quite uncharacteristically. I subtly conveyed my opposing opinion via the medium of fake vomiting. No more was said about it.
It was only years later that I found out I’d been on a date with the bass player that night without knowing. Oh, and that my mum had been on a date with him the week before too, to test him out for me.
Yes, in a turn of events that did SO much for my selfesteem, it transpired that my mum was so despairing of me ever finding a bloke that she decided to do it for me.
She posted a profile of me on a website on my behalf. This guy had answered, so my mum went to lunch with him (he agreed to these terms, by the way, so we were doomed from the off, because WHO DOES THAT?).
I’m quite proud that I managed to scupper my mum’s plan, even if it was only completely by accident with no idea that anything was going on. Imagine if I’d liked him and we’d ended up having a long, happy marriage... that would have been awful.
In the end, my mum did play a bit of a blinder for me though – also unintentionally.
The first time I brought my husband home to meet my parents, she insisted on taking him for a tour of the garden. He could already see all of it from where he was standing, so I knew she was up to something.
As soon as they were alone, she said, and let’s not forget, she’d known him for under 10 minutes, “The place I want Polly to get married has a year-and-a-half waiting list, so if you propose now, the wedding wouldn’t be for ages...”
A risky strategy, I’m sure you’ll agree, but Mr H says the fact he didn’t leave a himshaped hole in the wall as he legged it at breakneck speed told him something about how he felt that might have taken him ages to realise otherwise.
So my mum did land me a husband after all. Yes, she could have been forever smug if she’d been successful in her matchmaking... but at least this way neither of us have to pretend to like jazz.