“Cole, Carson, Hannah, dinner!” I holler in no particular direction, knowing they will hear me wherever they are in the house.  My husband set the bowl of broccoli down and seats himself. 

Carson emerges from her basement bedroom her boyfriend Chris, and his friend Mason, following in her wake.

I look up, “Are they eating with us?”

“No.” she answers. “They just ate.”

My kids sit at the table and dig in while the two boys, young men really, stand around us.  Not entirely comfortable, but we’re used to it by now. 

“Have you taken the test?” Carson asks Chris.

Mason laughs as Chris blushes, “Yeah.” he mumbles looking at his feet. 

Mason ribs him a little and both boys laugh.

“When I took it, I got…” My middle daughter, Hannah, is cut off by Carson asking her boyfriend another question. 

“What’d you get?” 

“Twenty-six.”  Everyone laughs as my husband and I look on, wondering when they’ll let us in on the joke.

Hannah attempts to fill us in. “It’s a purity test.”

“It’s the Rice Test.” Carson says, as if that explained everything.

I have visions of little grains of rice dancing through my head.  My confusion obvious Hannah adds, “You fill it out online.” She then turns to Chris, “Oh my God, twenty-six!  I got seventy-eight.”

I looked at Carson, “What did you get?”

She laughs admitting “Thirty-nine.”

“What’s it out of?” My husband shouts over the ever-increasing sounds of teenagers ragging on each other.

Chris answers him, “One hundred, the lower the score the worse you are.”

I assume worse means “less-pure” and start to wonder about my daughter dating a “twenty-six”.

“Here.” Mason hands me his phone.  He has pulled up a site, ricepuritytest.com.  I look to my right and see my husband is already clicking away on his own phone.  I begin.

Question one, have you ever held hands romantically?  I smile, this is gonna be easy. 

I have to ask about number four. Have you danced without leaving room for Jesus? Hannah explains and I move on. 

The questions continue getting racier and funnier. Like number ten, have you ever kissed horizontally? Or number sixty-nine which contains only a question mark. 

Some questions you need to make sure you read all the way through. For example, number eighty-one that asks if you’ve ever participated in a booty call. You can click yes, but only if that booty call was with someone you weren’t in a relationship with.

In the end if you have had any type of life experience, it will be hard to get anything over fifty. 

I remind myself of the running tally; Hannah at seventy-eight, Carson at thirty-nine, Chris at twenty-six, and Mason with thirty-two.  I hit submit but the screen freezes.  What’s my score?  Carson snatches the phone and does something to the screen.  She squeaks and places the phone face down on the table.

“What is it?” I’m a little surprised at how much I want to know. 

“Twenty-eight.”

Here’s the thing, I’ve been married for over twenty years.  I have three children and I grew up in the time where parenting consisted of whistling for the kids to come in at the end of the day.  Needless to say, I’ve done some stuff.  I know what went into the making of that twenty-eight. 

Now, I ask you, what in the hell did an eighteen-year-old kid, whose dated my daughter for four years, do to earn a twenty-six!

As I sit and think, wallowing in my pit of impurity, my husband’s phone dings, his results are in.  Silence reins as we wait for him to speak.

“Well, what is it?” I prod him.

He looks at me, “Sixteen.”