Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar...Ribs?

Meeting your significant other's parents for the first time totally sucks. Meeting them subsequent times also totally sucks. There is a great deal of pressure to seem responsible, but not controlling. To be polite, but not stuffy. To be fun, but not obnoxious. As if that's not enough, the odds are stacked against you from the beginning because every parent is convinced that no person in the world is worthy of dating their little snowflake.

For guys, there's the added pressure of what to do when the check comes. If you offer to pay, does it look like you're implying that the parents can't afford to? Does it send the message that you are trying to buy their daughter off of them? If you don't offer to pay, do you look cheap? While I would usually advise offering, I would say that depending on the situation, either could be the right answer to the check conundrum.

Then there is that hidden third route which is never the right answer. That is the one which Fred chose to take.

Fred came to visit me at my parents' house. Since he only packed jorts, this limited our dining options, but my parents still wanted to take us out to dinner. So, we went to a casual restaurant which served mainly burgers and such. My parents ordered wraps (they're health-conscious) and I ordered a burger (I am not so health-conscious). Fred decided that he just couldn't resist ordering ribs.

This was a little annoying to me since it is such a fussy and messy meal and no one else was eating it. I was a little shocked that he wanted to eat something that was so sloppy in front of my parents. But, I didn't say anything. I didn't even give him a dirty look when he proceeded to get barbecue sauce and bits of meat all over his face and his ugly ass Hawaiian shirt.

When the check came, Fred decided that he should offer to pay. But rather than offer to split the bill with my parents, he presented them with a barbecue sauce soaked five dollar bill. Why? Because he figured his meal was about five dollars more than everyone else's. I wish I were joking about this.

I can understand that he would not offer to pay for everyone's meal. He was 22 and at 22, taking four people out to dinner, even to a burger joint, is a big investment.

However, given that he had chosen to offer to pay part of the check, I feel like the minimum offer he should have made would have been for his full meal. The preferred would have been to just split the damn check -- maybe offering to throw in a few extra bucks if he were truly concerned about his meal costing more.

But just paying the difference between his meal and the table average? How did this seem like a good idea? I tried to whisper discreetly to him to just not offer at all. This would have been a lot less awkward than offering up five dollars.

My parents were confused and annoyed by the offer and politely refused. But they never let me forget it, despite my attempts to block that night out of my memory.