I was quite understandably nervous when I met my girlfriend’s father.  He was a large man with chiseled hands that were worn by years of working with tools as a chemical engineer.  My hands are soft, smooth, and almost feminine.  I’ve never done a day of hard labor in my life.  I work on a Chicago email marketing campaign for my company.  I mostly just type and write all day.  I’m afraid to even pick up a nail.  It might scratch and mar my delicate hands.  So when I shook hands with my girlfriend’s father, he seemed hardly impressed.  I even wondered why he was wearing a helmet all the time, but I didn’t really feel like questioning him about that at the moment.  After an awkward dinner where he didn’t laugh at any of my jokes, he pulled me aside.  I thought I was just in for a stern lecture about how I could never be good enough for his daughter.  Instead, he threw his helmet at me and it hit me squarely in the chest.  I almost fell over.  He called me a hippy and told me to get out of his sight before he slapped me.  I complied.