12RulemakingOn Trying Not to Become Your Parents
When I was in high school, I had an imaginary best friend named Danielle Darling. There was a real Danielle Darling at my school—a cheerleader with meticulous blond highlights and a boyfriend who resembled a Latino Ken doll. The real Danielle had no idea that I existed, yet she unwittingly played a critical role in my high school social life.
Every Saturday of senior year, I would tell my parents I was at a sleepover at Danielle’s house. I posted her parents’ phone number up on my parents’ fridge, and shuffled awkwardly out the door into the dry LA evening, an electric tingle under my skin.
I would head straight to my boyfriend Ben’s house—he occupied the entire basement of his dad’s house following his parents’ bitter divorce. His father, a schleppy Jewish man with a slow gait, was delighted that his son had a Jewish girlfriend and turned a blind eye to our Saturday night sleepovers. Ben and I would stay up late listening to the Dave Matthews Band on repeat, staring at the fake stars on his ceiling, and exchanging deep thoughts about the upcoming X-Men movie.
The phone number I had left on my parents’ fridge was actually my friend Nina’s father’s fax number. This was an era of digital dinosaurs, where fax lines and phone lines did double duty, so it wasn’t unusual to call a phone number and get a busy signal that a fax was being sent. ...
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