A Little Dating Advice

Mia turns 15 this week. That means driver's training, obsessive Facebooking, ipod-assisted parent ignoring, and (*gulp*) boys. Fortunately, the giddy terrors of dating remain, for Mia, largely unexplored as of yet. This is giving us time to slap together some parental wisdom on this perennially puzzling topic, filled as it is with risks, with unknowns, with new life and new civilizations.

Not being experts on dating ourselves*, we figure we need to consult the source of our most valuable life-wisdom: Star Trek. (Sample: never beam down to the planet while wearing a red shirt!)

Wesley Crusher, for instance, the ST character in the tender teenage demographic, has a couple of alarming encounters with "young women" who are not what they seem to be. In fact, many a promising space romance has been cut brutally short by some groaner of a revelation. Picard, Riker, Kirk, Bev Crusher, Troi, Jake Sisco--just about every starfleet character with a smidge of libido has discovered that love can bring, shall we say, unexpected challenges.

As with so many things in life, a lot of these complications could be avoided with some careful screening beforehand. So here we present the "Wesley Crusher Pre-Date Quiz." All Rienstra children will be required to administer this quiz to all interested parties before anybody backs out the driveway.

• Are you now or have you ever been a being of pure energy?
  
  
• Are you a psychic projection, a transporter reflection, or a sophisticated hologram?

• Are you a shape-shifter? (this does not necessary disqualify you)
  
  
• Are you ferociously guarded by a shape shifter? (this does disqualify you)
  

• If we innocently kiss, will I be impregnated by your alien spawn?
  

• Do you reproduce in some unexpected way that you really should inform me of right now?

• Are you a symbiont being, and if so, do both your parts agree in their affection for me?

• Do you only like me because I'm the first thing you saw when you emerged from your maturity pod? (this doesn't necessarily disqualify you, either).

• Do you, in fact, exist at this point in the space-time continuum?

Of course, in addition to this filtering system, all would-be suitors will also be required to cite, from memory, the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. Let's see Wesley's space girlfriends do that.

*By the way, not being dating experts and being Star Trek experts -- total coincidence!