Kat is fretting about meeting The Boyfriend's Mother. I can tell her now it will be a lot less scary than the first time I met Paul's mom, because I'm sure TBM is not going to take her on The Scariest Car Ride of Her Life.

Now where to begin?

Let's start with the road. The major road to get from the village to Paul's home is called the Scenic Highway. It's a mountain road so when it's not busy going up and down, it does this wonderful twisting and turning thing. Sometimes, for fun, it goes up and down and twists at the same time. Fun. Fun. Fun.

It was an unpaved gravel road then, so you had the bonus of hitting patches where it felt as if you were driving on marbles. Thirty years ago, the township also didn't bother with sissy stuff like actually marking upcoming curves or putting up guard rails.

These days it looks like this--it's paved and believe it or not when they were paving it they shaved the hills down as much as they could. They have taken a lot of the sport out of driving this road.

Okay, you have a sense of the road.

Now for Paul's mom.

Norma has slowed down now in her 70's but back when I first met her the woman had a lead foot. How heavy a foot? Well, let me put it this way.

My dad was a motorcycle courier during WWII which meant he drove at top speed at night with his headlight off over country roads carrying dispatches, hoping that some German sniper wouldn't take him out. After he came back to Canada after the war he was a motorcycle cop and later transferred to a squad car. He was a ballsy driver and had been fully trained in pursuit driving.

The first time dad visited and he and I followed Norma over the Scenic Highway in his car, my dad turned to me and said, "Marn, we're going to let her go on ahead." She was home long before we were, and my dad was not a pokey driver. Ever after, when he was inquiring after Norma's health, my father would ask, "How's Parnelli InsertPaul'sLastNameHere doing?"

He was incredulous the woman was still alive. He was not surprised that she had totalled three cars over her driving career. He could not believe she had never received a scratch.

Okay, so now you've got the road, and the driver. Have I left anything out?

Oh yes.

Did I mention she was drunk?

For the record, this never happens. I can't remember seeing Norma drunk another time. But that evening my bus was coming in at the supper hour. Paul and Norma were at Burton's place (a family friend) killing time waiting for me, and Burton insisted that Norma try his new home made blackberry cordial.

Blackberry cordial is very sweet and packs a killer punch. Norma, who might have a glass of sherry once in a blue moon, had three glasses of cordial on an empty stomach. Hooooooo yeah.

So my bus comes in, I get in the backseat of Norma's station wagon and we're off.

One final thing you should know about Norma is that she does not think silence is golden. Nope. Silence is a terrible vacuum which must be filled at all costs no matter how inane the chatter that fills it.

And she likes to look you in the eye while she's talking to you.

And I was in the backseat.

And every time she turned to look at me, she cranked the steering wheel slightly to the right.

You fill in the blanks. It was the longest 20 minutes of my life. Fortunately, I was still biting my nails back in those days. Otherwise, the way I dug my fingers into my palms during that trip would have left me with permanent scars.

I had been so scared of meeting Paul's parents, so convinced that they would find me gawky, stupid, and unworthy of their son. After that car ride, I was too numb with terror to care what they thought about me.

Fortunately, they couldn't have been kinder.

Now that I'm a mom and the table is turned, and I've gone through the experience of meeting my kid's sweetie, I realize why Norma tossed back all that cordial. She was just as scared of meeting me as I was of meeting her, just as scared that I would find her gawky, stupid and unworthy.

Hardly. We have our moments, of course. We've been known to tiff, but by and large we get along very well. She's a great person--good-hearted, generous and considerate. Except for the time that she took me on The Scariest Car Ride of My Life, of course.

Nobody's perfect, eh.