Seemingly casual occasions with your spouse’s (or potential spouse’s) family can be filled with make-or-break moments. Here’s what you need to be able to do to pull it off.
Via: Shutterstock
Hanging out with your significant other's family can be tough at any time, but is especially so on a day intrinsically connected to the notion of being an American.
Fail at July 4th activities and you have failed a lot more than just being a boyfriend/girlfriend, unless your in-laws are professors, in which case your lack of patriotism is sure to make you a treasured "comrade" of your radical father-in-law, whose name is Dr. Lucas Lewis-Weisenhauser. But, otherwise, here are the nine things you need to know how to do to thrive at a July 4th get-together:
Throw a baseball with confidence and aplomb.
This is a big one. Did you have parents who never taught you to throw? Do you think calling baseball the "national pastime" doesn't properly reflect the interests of a 21st-century country for which football, basketball, NASCAR, and, yes, even soccer are more compelling games — if we're even going to be so testosteronormative as to insist that the national pastime must be a competitive sport? That's unfortunate, because even the most tolerant among us are going to see your weenie throw and think to ourselves, "Looks like [your name] might be better off moving to Quebec."
Send someone out on a football pass pattern.
Still sports-related, but less physically demanding. Footballs are a weird shape and only like one out of every 10 people can actually throw one, probably because they were born with weird crooked hands. Don't feel bad about not being born with weird crooked hands. The only important thing is whether you can say "go deep" with the right tone of voice.
