#like ollie do you not know your aunt leslie

[waffle-sjunior-blog]

2032

“Ann, can we talk about something?” a voice asked from outside Ann Perkin’s office at St. Joe’s. Before Ann could answer, the person had pushed open the door and sat on an empty chair in front of her cluttered desk, tossing her bag on her mom’s floor.

Ann almost laughed, remembering the many conversations that had started in similar ways named Leslie in the chair across from her. Usually those conversations ended with Leslie Knope hugging her or sitting on her lap. Conversations with this Leslie, her daughter, rarely ended that way. Though she would like a hug from this Leslie, it was a habit that seemed uncool to her daughter post her 16th birthday.

“Sure, Lulu, what’s up?” Ann asked, closing her laptop to look right at her daughter, who groaned at the childhood nickname her mother had used for years to differentiate between her and her famous aunt. Leslie was wearing the scrubs she’d put on earlier that morning for her volunteer shift and Ann assumed it was a medical question until she noticed Leslie had shut her office door. “Is this about that creep Dr. Moffatt in radiology? Because he is getting fired.”

“It’s not about that,” Leslie, or LC as her friends called her, said in a quick huff. “I’m not even volunteering right now, my shift just ended and I haven’t changed,” and in a quick and quiet run, “I just wanted to talk, ok?”

“Ok!” Ann beamed at her daughter, who was the spitting image of her dad, but seemed to not inherit his eternally sunny outlook.

“When you were 17,” LC began. Ann corrected her, and she added “Like in a few months, Ann!”

“I know honey,” Ann said, stopping before she repeated the lecture she gave her daughter months earlier. That Ann felt her daughter, who wanted to be a doctor since she was six, who skipped seventh and 11th grade, always wanted to grow up so fast. It was a lengthy enough fight to get LC to agree to only volunteer ten hours at the hospital when she was still in high school.

“I love Westley,” LC said, looking at her nails, recently manicured at Galentine’s day party, “I, um, have you, ever had to make a choice about,” she paused and a thousand thoughts went racing through Ann’s mind. Her daughter had been going out with her best friend’s son for three months now and Ann had a vision of LC really, really growing up too quickly.

“Honey, we will support you no matter what,” Ann said as gently as possible, wanting to race over to the other side of the desk and hug her daughter. She had given her daughter and son the safe sex lecture and, telling them both that they should wait for someone they loved or just wanted to have a baby with. She didn’t know if either of her kids were sexually active, but she was prepared for anything. She tried to look as positive as possible, “It’s your choice, no matter what former President Pence says, we will.”

“What?” LC looked at her mother confused.

“Oh, obviously, it’s your choice if you want to decide the other option, I’m sure Leslie will be so happy. And either way,”

“I don’t really think she will, Ann,” LC sighed, then, as if remembering something, “Do you have any Midol? I have really bad period cramps.”

“Oh thank God,” Ann said, relaxing her shoulders, “I mean, I do, here you go.” Ann handed her daughter a bottle from a drawer in her desk and LC uncapped the water bottle she grabbed from her backpack. “And you don’t think Leslie will be happy. About Westley?”

“I love Westley, I really do,” LC said, playing with the lid of the pill bottle, “But I think I like someone else and he likes me, and he asked me out and he’s so cute,” her words trailed off as Ann took in what her daughter was saying.

“You know, just because you are almost 17 and dating someone, it doesn’t mean you have to marry Westley. You just say, I’m sorry, Leslie, but it’s over, I made you cookies.”

“You mean Westley.”

“I was just getting ready for my talk with Leslie,” Ann said. “I think she’ll understand, it’s happened before.”

“But I don’t want to break up with Westley,” LC said, confused.

“Lulu, if you want to date someone else, that’s pretty much what you have to do,” Ann said sternly, now that the prospect of a post “the kids broke up” hug and cookie session with her best friend had come up. Between her job and Leslie’s demanding position, they rarely had long stretches of time to hang out. The last time might have been the three weeks prior Saturday when Westley and LC went on their first date. She and Leslie, the adult one, had gotten drunk and named all of their future grandkids. And now that Ann was going to have to explain to Leslie that her future grandchildren, who would hopefully be born many decades from now, were only going to be related to her.

“We’re going to hug for three solid hours,” Ann said with a whisper, half nervous and half excited.

“If you want to hug someone, hug Ollie or Chris,” LC said, rolling her eyes. Ann stood up and walked around her desk.

“I gave birth to you, I get to hug you sometimes,” Ann said, wrapping her arms around her daughter.

“Not for three hours, Ann.”

“Fine,” Ann said, sitting in the chair across from her daughter’s chair. “But that’s what you have to do. Not hug Westley for three hours. I’m not going to tell you what to do in your dating life, and I can’t even say this is something that I’ve done, but dating two people at the same time is just going to bite you in the ass. Trust me, I grew up with a lot of TV shows that covered this topic.”

“Ok,” LC said, more to not get another lecture.

“So tell me about this new guy,” Ann said, “Is he cute?”

“Eww, gross, Ann, he’s 17.”

“I meant for you, Lu, Leslie.”