Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad | 
 enlarge | Author: Bob Morris
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 308175
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0061374121
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.87420922
EAN: 9780061374128
ASIN: 0061374121
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
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Product Description
What would you do if your eighty-year-old father dragged you into his hell-bent hunt for new love? Bob Morris, a seriously single son, tells you all about it in this warm, witty, and wacky chronicle of a year of dating dangerously. A few months after the death of his wife, Joe Morris, an affable, eccentric, bridge-obsessed octogenarian, starts flapping about for a replacement. If he can get a new hip, he figures, why not a new wife? At first, his son Bob is appalled, but suspicion quickly turns to enthusiasm as he finds himself trolling the personals, screening prospects, and offering etiquette tips, chaperoning services, and post-date assessments to his needy father. Bob hopes that Joe will find a well-heeled lady—or at least one who is very patient—to get him out of his hair. But soon they discover that finding a new mate will not be as easy as they think: one date is too morose, another too liberal; one's a three-timer, another just needs an escort until Mr. Right comes along. Dad persists and son assists. Am I pimping for my father? he begins to wonder. Meanwhile, Bob suffers similar frustrations; trying to find love isn't easy in a big-city market that has little use for a middle-aged gay man with an attitude and a paunch. But with the encouragement of his father (his biggest fan and the world's "most democratic Republican") he prevails. In the end, this memoir becomes a twin love story and a soulful lesson about giving and receiving affection with an open heart. With wicked humor and a dollop of compassion, Bob Morris gleefully explores the impact of senior parents on their boomer kids and the perils of dating at any age.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Assisted Loving January 6, 2009
Loved it! Absolutely one of the funniest stories I have read. Thank you Bob Morris for sharing the trials of dating with your Dad.
Surprisingly powerful September 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bob Morris's father (not the guy on the book's cover!) is pushing eighty when Assisted Loving opens. He's a youthful eighty, though, and newly widowed, a retired traffic judge, so he's a hot commodity among senior singles. Not one to mourn over-much, he is ready only months after his wife of fifty-plus years died (in 2002) to start the search for a new mate. He enlists his son to help him, and the younger Morris chronicles his fathers re-emergence on the dating scenes of Palm Beach and New York. That's the plot of the book, but the dates merely serve as the framework onto which Morris packs a meatier story about his relationship with his father and about growing up. At book's end, Joe Morris remains the man he was at the beginning: happy-go-lucky, exasperating, utterly devoted to his son. It's Bob Morris who emerges from the experience a changed (to a degree) man.
It's difficult to like Bob Morris for the first third of his book. His father may be legitimately annoying--most parents are--but at forty-four the younger Morris still acts like a teenager around him: pouting and saying just the wrong thing and not having much patience for the eccentricities of an old man. Worse, Morris is a superficial, elitist jerk. He's embarrassed by his old neighborhood, turns up his nose at his father's kitsch. He's irritated that visits with his father take him away from his usual party-hopping. Morris's mother had been very ill for years before her death. Morris was disappointed during that period because she lost interest in her appearance. He was ashamed to be seen with a dying woman who wasn't fashionable: "It was hard, watching her in her hopelessness. It was even harder seeing her thin, bruised arms and neck because she dressed in the most unflattering T-shirts." He dragged her out to Macy's to buy her new clothes--blouses, and hats to cover her thinning hair. He claims it made her happy, but it sure sounds like the new wardrobe was for him more than her.
Morris may be a jerk, but he's also self-aware. He is, after all, drawing attention to his bad behavior and, largely, condemning it. In the course of hanging out with his father during the dating period, the younger Morris becomes a better man--still, it seems, someone whose instinct is to be impressed by the superficial, but a better man. It is impressive that Morris is able to alienate the reader at the beginning of his book yet still bring us around by the end so that he seems likable. Also impressive is the portrait Morris paints of his father. The initial image we get of Joe Morris is a negative one, a man as seen through the eyes of a son who has little sympathy for him and is still harboring adolescent resentments. But as the book progresses we are given more insight into the older Morris, who turns out to be more supportive than many parents are and wiser than we might at first have supposed. It's a powerful portrait. And Assisted Loving is a well-written, funny, and surprisingly affecting book.
-- Debra Hamel
funny and poignent August 31, 2008
When I purchased this book I thought it would be all comedy. I was pleasantly surprised that although it had its funny moments it was also filled with nostalga and caring. A loving story about a father and son and their mutual acceptance.
This book changed the way i think about my own parents! August 28, 2008
I LOVED this book. It's written really well, but more than that..it's funny and makes you think about your own life...love...family...death.
I love the relationship that grew between this son and dad...and how the writer found his own love and life by being patient and accepting his dad's love and life.
I highly recommend this to anyone who has older parents and know that life doesn't stop when you are a senior citizen!
Could not put this book down July 21, 2008
Absolutely entertaining, witty and poignant. I work in the elder care field and was delighted by this account of an elderly gentleman's search for romance and yes nooky. Bob Morris tells the story of his father's romantic quests with humor and empathy. A must read for anyone with a single elderly parent or anyone who has hope for a geriatric dating life!
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