Formidable Sense of Doom is Closing in

Help!!! My baby is growing up!!!

I’ve told several expectant fathers over the last few years that your worldview completely changes when you have a daughter. I don’t know what it’s like when you have a boy because we only have one child. It popped out as a girl and has stayed that way ever since.

Young men growing up in the world are expected have a certain lack of sensibilities when dealing with members of the opposite sex. There’s the locker room humor, and the … well … things never really get past the locker room humor stage. Let’s face it, guys are fairly one dimensional and are happy living in that one dimension. But once you have a daughter, all those jokes suddenly aren’t so funny anymore. After all, someday some stupid, ignorant, jerk is going to be saying those things about your daughter. Wouldn’t you like to get hold of him some evening in a dark alley with some super glue and a roll of duct tape?

It’s not that all guys are bad … then again, maybe it is. After all, I have female acquaintances in their college years whom I’ve told will never find a guy that is good enough for them. How do you think I will feel about my own daughter?

As I was sitting on the couch Saturday evening, the brilliant 7-year-old blonde walked up beside me.

“Da-da,” she said, because that is what she calls me. “I have a crush on Corbin.”

The little man inside my head reacted immediately, ripping at handfuls of hair while running madly around the room and planting himself face first into the padded walls, only to get up and commence screaming and running around the room again, and again, and again …

“Oh really?” I said in a calm, cool voice. “Why do you have a crush on Corbin?”

“He’s soooo cuuuute!”

My left eye began to twitch.

… as it turns out, she is not in the same second-grade class as Corbin, which is a good thing, but she has resorted to stealing his shoe at recess. … This is serious.

Her Pa-Pa and I are at a loss. After all, how do you sufficiently put the fear of God into a second grader in terms that he will understand for the next 20 years? I guess we could shave all the fuzz off his teddy bear, then hold it over his head just out of reach until he crumples into a huddled mass of hysteria. Or we could just take away his cookies at lunch.

… I’ll have to think on that one for a while.