Go Ask Dad: Reports from the front lines of mating

Recently, I was perusing my oldest son’s homework, as he had left a stack of notebook papers on the credenza, making it fair game for a curious dad. This son is tight-lipped about school details, often responding to curious questions with one-word answers: His day was “fine.” He learned “stuff.”

This stack of his papers caught my attention, especially a brief, hand-written report on rhino beetles: “Adult male rhino beetles fight by using they’re (sic) rhino-like horns, the winner gets the female.” The report did not linger upon this victory, but dutifully described habitat and diet.

By the credenza, I found myself transported back to my high school in Raleigh when I was in competition for the allusive attention of the mysterious female. Unlike rhino beetles, whose task seems relatively straightforward, I found that jockeying for a mate among my species was a bewildering and an outright contradicting affair. Do not tell her that you “like her,” especially if you really do, but rather play it cool … unless you appear to be a jerk! In which case, you should call her, but not too often so as to appear desperate.

There was a young woman with whom I was enamored. Prom was approaching and many classmates had already paired off. I knew I had to act. I worked up my courage one day after school. I remember she stood under an oak tree, for which my hometown is known. Perhaps in imitation of that majestic tree’s branches stretching into the blue sky, I offered that classmate a high-five. No, I should just admit that I panicked. She rolled her eyes, walked off, and she went to prom with another dude.

Someday, I imagine my teenage children — barely masking their incredulity — wondering how the heck I managed to date, much less marry the woman who brought them into this world and, in large part, sustains them through it. I will share that, upon seeing her at a summer cookout, my heart leapt into my vocal cords — a sure sign of attraction, but one that rendered me mute. In the absence of the ability to speak, I gave her a high-five. That’s right. You might think I’d have learned my lesson. In the absence of rhino horns, I flailed with my appendages.

She found my gesture just silly and awkward enough to be endearing, possibly even attractive. (These ways are mysterious.) And it was that high-five that marked the first moment on the long, complicated, joyous journey of our relationship, which bore three children, the eldest of whom is perhaps more like his awkward father than said child would care to admit.

From his report, I learned that rhino beetles, like humans, live on every continent except Antarctica. Their larvae eat “dead matter from plants.” And then, once they are adults, rhino beetles “fight, mate, and reproduce more rhino beetles.” If only it were that easy, Son. But you will have one evolutionary advantage — your looks more closely resemble your mother.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems. He is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. He and his wife, also an ordained minister, parent three children and a dog named Ramona.