Here’s me. (Or at least that — speaking of parents — is what I look like when I go home and instantly regress.) What about you?

Did you learn most of what you know about relationships from your parents? And is that good or bad?

If the latter, at least we’ve always had fantasy families to lean on: the Huxtables, the Wilders, the late great Joyce Summers. So please enjoy, at Babble.com, this list of — and homage to — the 25 Best Fictional Parents.

Climbing the corporate lad, from February 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Now that I’m over my ex (although there are still a few of his belongings in my garage; I think I’ll create some metal art), I’m ready to move on. There is a fellow at my workplace whom I’ve recently met; he works in another department in another building, is friendly and has a photograph of he and his daughter on his desk (no wife). I would like to get to know more about him. Well, in this world of appropriate workplace behaviour, how do I get the two of us together outside of the office in order to find out more about him? In my position at work I am confident and can tackle the unknown, but in my personal life I can’t seem to initiate that first step. What’s a professional woman to do?

— Tired of Following the Rules

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May … September … February 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been seeing a much younger man for about two years now (he’s 28 and I am 58). We are really crazy about each other but I am afraid that I may offer him more of a mother-figure relationship than one of a lover. We haven’t talked about “where we are” lately, but should I let him go, or make something more permanent out of it? Yes, I mean marriage. Would it be fair for someone my age to try to wed a young stud like him?

— Darry

 
Dear Darry,

Wow, that is a May-September thing (yeah, as in May 1958, September 1998). Let me ask you this: are you worried about the mother-figure thing in principle, or in practice? I mean, does your concern stem from a vague “Is this weird?” notion — or from some actual dynamic you guys have (e.g. when he didn’t call to say he’d be late for dinner, you took away his phone privileges). Or, for that matter, is there some Freud-oid episode in his past (oh, say, loss of his mother) that might predispose him to seek out a substitute? Or one in your past that might predispose you to be that substitute?

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And yeah — much like this story on Tango’s website muses about the onstage-only heat that’s generated between Dancing with the Stars’ two-stepping twosomes — I three-quarters wish that Shawn were dancing in the sheets with Mark Ballas. Despite the whole, you know, potential ick factor of her being underage and all.

*Translation: Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, all of 16, won this season’s Dancing with the Stars mirrorball trophy Tuesday night. She was considered a way-underog behind French-fried throb du coeur Gilles Marini, who qualifies as an aforementioned “star” because he gave us all a peep at his pecker in the Sex and the City movie.

Is the U.S. “not ready for snarky superheroes” — you mean, besides the super-popular Captain Hammer? — or does this series just sound kind of grim?

At very least, clearly we do need some sort of hero here — a sidekick, at least, called Rewrite, or something — to swoop in and vaporize all lameass gay jokes.

The United Nations, home of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Gender and Equality, the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, apparently needs to take a good look inside its own ranks. As today’s Wall Street Journal reports:

The United Nations, which aspires to protect human rights around the world, is struggling to deal with an embarrassing string of sexual-harassment complaints within its own ranks.

Many U.N. workers who have made or faced accusations of sexual harassment say the current system for handling complaints is arbitrary, unfair and mired in bureaucracy. One employee’s complaint that she was sexually harassed for years by her supervisor in Gaza, for example, was investigated by one of her boss’s colleagues, who cleared him.

Cases can take years to adjudicate. Accusers have no access to investigative reports. Several women who complained of harassment say their employment contracts weren’t renewed, and the men they accused retired or resigned, putting them out of reach of the U.N. justice system.

“No matter which way the cases go, they mishandle it,” says George G. Irving, a former U.N. attorney who now represents clients on both sides of such cases.

The U.N. has announced plans to implement changes to its internal justice system on July 1, but some in the know say they’re still not enough. For one thing: “Many U.N. managers have diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution or civil litigation.” Well, then.

The WSJ has done an in-depth investigation; click here for the rest of the gories. And here, and here, for BG’s take on sexual harassment.

Let’s hope they’re more charming than the want-ad for their services.

Nope, not Kris vs. Adam — though there’s that. After 65 years, the most famous, and ageless, love triangle may finally be resolved. “The wholesome, red-headed teenager Archie Andrews will be popping the question to one of his childhood sweethearts,” reports wowowow.com (via the Archie Comics official blog), “but who will it be, Betty Cooper or Veronica Lodge?”

Well? Who do you think it should be? And what will the answer mean for “good”/”bad” girls everywhere?

Really, Kara DioGuardi? Really?

You’re not exactly Springsteen, but anyone who could pen “Ain’t No Other Man” could at least come up with something NOT worse than “Inside Your Heaven.” Or so you’d think.

Mainly, though, we need to discuss the title of this year’s Idol Single ™. “No Boundaries.” I do not think that means what you think it means. Someone with “no boundaries” is not someone with no limits on what he/she can achieve. Someone with no boundaries is someone who overshares on a first date. Someone made of TMI. Someone who says “I know we’ve just met, but could you drive me to the airport?” or, “So how often do you and your wife have sex?” or “Oh, crap. Can I borrow your underwear?” — standing, all the while, just a little too close. So for Idol coronation anthems that double as love songs, we’ll take “A Moment Like This,” and leave it at that.