“I don’t care if the guy looks like George Clooney, Morgan!” Leslie declared, her mouth full of chips. “He will not be welcome in this house!”
“Daddy, help me.”
“Well, your mother’s got a point, Doodlebug,” Warren stated. “We raised you better than that.”
“Ugh!” Morgan threw her head back as if supplicating to the gods. Looking back at her parents, she made sure she had their attention. “He is not a Trump supporter!” Then, frustrated her parents had got her misusing pronouns, she shook her head to get her mind back on track.
“Then what is he?” Leslie demanded.
“A woman!” Morgan blurted out. “He is a she. A woman. I’ve been dating a woman for the past six weeks.”
Warren said, “A-ha!” and then turned to Leslie with his hand held out. “You owe me twenty bucks!”
“What are you talking about?” Leslie demanded.
“I bet you twenty bucks back when she was a kid that she was gay.”
Morgan’s mouth dropped open.
What the hell was this?
Leslie rolled her eyes.
“Christ, Warren, that was thirty years ago.”
“You’re right; I’m forgetting interest. Let’s see, you’re my wife and so I kind of like you…Let’s say, ten percent per year, that means you owe me eighty bucks.”
Leslie huffed and turned away from her husband.
“Would somebody please tell me what is going on here?” Morgan ordered. She felt like she had accidentally stepped into a crazy parallel universe. She looked at her father. “Why did you think I was gay thirty years ago?”
“Barbies.” Both her parents answered together.
Seriously, what the everloving hell?
“I would like to go on record first as saying that I did not agree with your father on this,” Leslie said.
“On what?” Morgan asked.
“You had that big Barbie Dream House, remember?” Leslie went on.
Morgan nodded. It had been one of her favorite toys as a kid.
“What about it?” she asked.
Her father jumped in.
“Well, you used to only let the girl Barbies in the dream house but you had all those boy Barbies also, remember?”
“I don’t think anyone calls them ‘boy Barbies,’ Daddy.”
Warren waved that off.
“Who cares? Anyway, you only played with the girl Barbies in the house and one day I made a crack to your mother that I bet her twenty dollars that you’re gay. I was only being a smartass, but still.”
“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” Morgan said while simultaneously wondering if, in light of recent events, it really was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. Not only that, this conversation with her parents was causing flashbacks to her days of playing with her Barbie dolls. Particularly the fact that, in her alternate Barbie universe, Barbie was married to Christie while Kira was married to Midge.
She shook her head.