My genes, your jeans

Yesterday I had the perfect night - I left work around seven, drove to my gym, worked out in the near desolation that being at Healthworks late on a Friday will guarantee you, showered, went home and put on my pjs, crawling into bed with some kettle corn and a good book. Before I started reading, I decided to call my dad for a chit chat. I knew Mookie would probably be home. How did I know? Because of my genes.

I remember my stepmom Betsy sighing as she'd leave the house on a Saturday evening. My dad and I, stretched out on our separate ends of the L-shaped sofa, would look up from our books to say goodbye. "You two," she'd say "are never going to be happy if you don't get out more." We'd look at each other, shrug, and return our noses from whence they came. After Betsy would leave, we'd call the dogs to the couch to join us.

I'm never home. Weeknights I manage to clammor through the door at around ten o'clock. On the weekend I'm out catching up with friends, running erands, with Boyfriend, with my roommate - just around. So I live for those moments of downtime. I always have. I'm the center of attention more than I'd like. I'd like to never be the center of attention. I'd like to be wallpaper. I prefer to go unnoticed. But that rarely happens.

My dad and I share many qualities - we look surprisingly alike: same teeth, same nose, same hands, similar lean lanky build. We both read feverishly and exercise religiously. We're both compulsive, in our own ways. We work hard. We're fascinated by cars, gender and sex roles, careless liberalism, and canines. We would prefer to live life in jeans and a t-shirt, but don't. And we've been known to pull a hermit every once a while, and usually couldn't be happier than when we're tucked up in our shells.

So the fact that we were both in on a Friday evening is not surprising. The fact that talking to each other didn't seem like an intrusion in our solitude makes sense - we don't harp on one another for being curled up with some good fiction on date night. We support the occasional reappearance of the inner geek. It fits in our universe, because it's in the genes. Congruent with who we are. Which, when you sum it up, is two people who occasionally pull a shut-in, and share an affinity for worn out, broken-in denim.