“Out for a few hours. But I’ll probably be back late.”

“Who are you going out with?”

“A friend. Someone you don’t know.”

“Where did you meet this friend?”

“It’s a long story.”

“What do you mean it’s a long story?”

“Look, I really gotta go, I’m running late. We’ll talk later, OK?”

Can you tell from the conversation who’s the parent and who’s the child?Such are the joys of dating when you have an older teen/young adult under the same roof, watching as you come and go, watching (or at least wondering) with whom you go out and with whom you might come back.

Many of us — the dating divorced — find ourselves experiencing a very interesting role reversal as we head out the door on a weekend evening. Our children are becoming our parents — or trying to. They are, in their own ways, watching over us, asking (at times aggressively) the very same questions we asked them, the very same questions our parents asked us many years ago.

Some of us find it amusing. Some of us find it annoying. And many of us don’t like what feels like an uncomfortable invasion of our privacy. Those questions we felt obligated to ask as good, responsible parents are coming back to haunt us.

How many women find themselves at the receiving end of their daughter’s clipped comment, “You’re wearing that on a date?”

And yet, I also have friends, particularly lady friends with older daughters, who say dating offers a new kind of “mommy and me” bonding experience — the mommy-daughter dish moment — and it appears the best dishing comes from the worst dates.

My own experience may be unusual, but when I moved into a new apartment following the end of a long marriage, my college-age son gave me an interesting housewarming gift: a box of condoms! This was not a male bonding ritual. Rather, it was his way of telling me that dating — and more importantly sexual attitudes and risks — had changed significantly since I was last “out there” in the late 1970s.

Culver City psychotherapist Janis Rosenberg cautions the divorced to “go slow” when they begin dating and says it’s hard, especially for teens, to see their parents as sexually active people.

“While many children might wish their parents would get a social life, it’s important to be sensitive and monitor their reaction to your dating activities and your dates,” Rosenberg says. “Queries like, Where are you going?’ and ‘Why are you wearing that?’ may reflect a child’s angry response to a parent they perceive as acting more like a roommate than a parent.”

Google allows us — and our children — to do a quick search on our dates and our companions. With online dating sites, there’s the risk we might see our children’s profiles — or they might see ours! Kiss your privacy good-bye. Internet-savvy children can wander through our web activities the same way they once searched in the closets for Christmas presents.

It really is a brave new world out there. My own response to friends who have asked about my new single life has been to say that it reminds me of dating in high school, but there are important distinctions: No one worries about school nights, we all have credit cards and no one’s a virgin.

And yet, with our children tracking our every move, many of us now find ourselves with the one thing we didn’t expect: a new “parent” watching as we walk out the door — wondering when (at what time and perhaps with whom) we’ll return.

Casey Green, a divorced father of two, works as a consultant to colleges and technology firms. His college-age daughter, an English and economics major, describes him as “the bestest daddy.”